


The Universe is not on our side.

by asocialwarrior



Category: Dead Space, The 100 (TV), clexa - Fandom
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, CLEXA ARE SPACE SOULMATES YOU CAN'T STOP ME, F/F, Lexa-centric, Raven the Mechanic who can make things go boom!, cross-over, deep-space mining, doctor!clarke, engineer!Lexa, men in charge so sad ending maybe, no bellamy so the blorgkes can't drag me, run and gun mate!, scifi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-13 21:11:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 40,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7137323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asocialwarrior/pseuds/asocialwarrior
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whilst Lexa is still recovering from the loss of her family and her first love, Costia, she is deployed on a special mission by the Church of Unitology and the Government, along with Clarke, Raven, Octavia, and Indra. They are ordered to decontaminate a small, wrecked ship arrived from Tau Volantis, which is floating below the Ark. Who knows what this mission entails?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rude Awakening.

**Author's Note:**

> First Clexa AU fanfic! Dead Space series spoilers!

_It's me, Lexa. I miss you so much. I wish I could tell you everything right now, but I can't. Chancellor Jaha and Becca forbid me to tell anyone anything that has happened on Polaris. But there's something strange going on here, I don't even know what it is._

_I have to go now. I love you._

_I love you._

_Lexa._

_Lexa._

_Lexa._

A subconscious and animal-like growl wakes Lexa up. She jolts upward as her face is covered in sweat and the rising rhythm of her chest almost smothers her. 

“Costia...,” she collapses her face into her palms. “I'm sorry...” 

The other side of her bed is empty, as usual. But the truth is that, it has always been empty since the day Costia left for Polaris to work on a confidential research project. It was kept concealed by both the Government and the Church, and whenever Lexa tearfully tried to ask Chancellor Jaha or Council member Marcus Kane what the “confidential research project” consisted of, Marcus Kane told Lexa to ask the Chancellor, just to receive the same response over and over: _I am sorry, Miss Woods, but it is highly top secret. Researcher Costia Forrest must not tell you. Even I mustn't, either._

It was the same response that Lexa received when she had repeatedly inquired about her parents' and Anya's deaths following a mining accident in the colony on Aegis VII twelve years ago. _We presumed it was a terrorist attack, but it remains top secret information._

Lexa still doesn't believe anything that comes out of the Chancellor's mouth. 

Her parents' involvement in deep-space mining was the reason why Lexa decided to become an engineer. _To explore. To repair. To create._ That was her engineer parents' mantra. Not only is it a highly profitable business, but it also promises Lexa of stability and permanent employment, even an opportunity to climb the social ladder within the Church and the Government. At twenty-three years old, it is not uncommon to find a young woman in such a brilliant and respectable position on the Ark, after pursuing her parents' footsteps. On the other hand, her older sister, Anya, was a little bit of a...rebel. She was terrible at math and science, two subjects in which the Woods sisters were predetermined to excel and from which their careers were supposed to commence. However, Anya was more of a warrior, obsessed with martial arts and sword-fighting; through her parents' eyes, she was wasting their resources invested in her science education. She was rather a...disappointment, if not a total failure. 

The moment when Anya decided to enroll on the Ark's security team, she brought shame to their entire family. Yet, shame wasn't what Lexa was feeling; she was feeling proud of her older sister. Never in her life had she seen someone resist to family pressure so graciously and so successfully. 

Lexa had always been supportive of Anya's choices. There was indeed reciprocity. But Anya didn't encourage Lexa to follow the same path, in every message broadcast back to the Ark from Aegis VII. _Because it's too dangerous._

_And engineering isn't? With the free-floating and playing with tools?_ That is something Lexa would retort to Anya's overprotectiveness. _Our parents almost died when retrieving some weird artifact on Aegis VII!_

 _But they are experienced engineers!_ Anya would snap back.

 _And I am not?_ Lexa would angrily reply, feeling underestimated. 

_You're an engineer-in-training, kid. That's why I decided to be a security member of the Elite team, Lex. I am the Chief Security Officer here on Aegis VII. I am protecting our parents in their workplace, even you back on the Ark!_

And Lexa would remember that, throughout Anya's life, she had always been supportive of her sister's decisions. Now, it was the time to remain faithful to her conviction. Anya was just trying to protect her family, after all... 

Yet, tragedy struck _that_ day. Lexa lost her entire family at age eleven. Rumours circulated that a terrorist attack committed by an alleged Government-deployed engineer Isaac Clarke completely rendered Aegis VII utterly unstable for lifeforms and transformed it into a gigantic magmatic sea, thus claiming the lives of all its residents. Including the Woods. The accident fueled further animosity of the Church towards the Government. Lexa has since been under Unitologist custody; Titus Lawrence and Gustus Kyne, two good pals of her parents', raised her following her family's demise, pumping into her brain Unitologist propaganda and beliefs. They were the fanatics who made a little girl a devout Unitologist.

But Lexa's heart showed no sign of weakness. Neither did her head. She used to believe in all the bullshit with which Titus and Gustus had been inflating her brain. _The Marker is our Holy Artifact. It will make us whole again. We need to make sacrifice to access the Afterlife. We have to make Convergence happen by sacrificing ourselves. Through death, we will become immortal. Remember, your life was given to you as a gift by an alien entity; you complete it, and you will access the City of Light, the Afterlife. To be a Unitologist is to worship the Holy Artifact._

So on and so forth... 

(Until Costia sent her _that_ message.)

\--- 

The Church of Unitology would say that the Government supported the attack in the colony of Aegis VII to annihilate the holy artifact, whereas the Government would accuse the Church of stealing resources from its budget to conduct dangerous and bizarre experiments on the artifact and humans. The quarrel would go back-and-forth like this for an entire year. Without evidence, of course. It has always been a question of power and influence, and which group could emerge and take over.

But for now, it is the Unitologists who are increasingly powerful. In spite of the aftermath of the detonation of Polaris last year on Unity Day. 

Thelonious Jaha, a devout, even fanatical Unitologist, is currently holding the “Chancellor” title. The competition used to be an alternation of power between Unitologists and Government representatives, yet, since the destruction of Aegis VII, the Church has found its ways to attract more supporters and convert naive souls into fanatical believers. The replication of the holy Black Marker has resulted in the existence of multiple Red Markers, scattered all over man-occupied space. It is simply a matter of time before the Church could lay its hands on these artifacts to consolidate its support base and power. 

Chancellor Jaha, allegedly, sent his son, Wells Jaha, onto Polaris to study the effects of the Red Marker, a human-made artifact from alien intelligence, on human minds. Wells was, reportedly, a test subject of the experiment, under the supervision of Unitologist mad scientist Becca Whitenight, who was the creator of the Red Marker on Polaris and conducted studies on the influence of the Marker on human minds. All Jaha wanted was to trigger Convergence and _make us whole again_ , to finally access the City of Light, the afterlife in Unitologist tradition. Who knows what else Becca had created? 

However, a tragedy occurred on last year's Unity Day. Apparently, the Red Marker, or rather, its creator, unleashed a deadly virus that turned normal humans into violent beings that experienced extreme hallucinations of dead loved ones. Eventually, Polaris crew members started massacring one another, or, worse, Unitologists persuaded them to commit mass suicide, whilst monstrous creatures were ravaging the entire station. Dead bodies were stored in Polaris's morgue, waiting for monsters to infect them, therefore turning the dead into living killing machines. Becca refused to join the Ark on Unity Day on the Chancellor's command, instead of blindly following the slogan _Make Us Whole Again_. He wanted Becca to successfully preserve the creatures on Polaris for further study, to see whether they would open the gates to the City of Light. The Church even encouraged mass suicide to render the Afterlife more accessible to all crew members. 

The truth is that, Polaris had been an isolated station since the creation of the Ark two centuries ago, following the primary resource crisis on Earth, forcing millions of people to flee upward into the void. Its initial purpose had been codified as a laboratory to restore the power of the Marker to human lives, through any means, to _make us whole again._

Predictably, Becca failed to contain the outbreak. But she was the one to unleash the virus, by injecting a vial of the Necromorph virus into Wells and preserving the “specimen” inside a large cryotube, hence nourishing him into a Hunter, capable of self-regeneration and extra agility. But that thing fled the cryotube and killed almost everybody on board. Except Costia and Becca. 

Costia hid herself in a storage room and broadcast her final message to Lexa.

_“Lexa, it's me, Costia,” she sniffed. “There–there is no hope on Polaris. An outbreak just started, and...,” she looked down, unable to utter a word. “Everybody is dead, Lexa... Everybody...,” her lips trembled. “Becca, Becca was really V–Victor Frankenstein all this time. Sh–she turned the Chancellor's son into a killing machine. Th–the Chancellor won't even let us go back to the Ark. He just detonated all of Polaris's escape pods... It's all over, Lexa... I wish I could see you again, but it's over._

_“I have no choice, but...,” she lifted a Plasma Cutter and glanced at it. “You see, I can't really go back, and I will be killed by that thing soon. Can you hear it?” She paused, stroking the trigger of the Cutter. “Everything the Church says is a lie, Lexa. There is no City of Light. There is no Afterlife. There are only...monsters.”_

_When Costia paused after the word “monsters”, a sharp roar could be heard from a close distance._

_“Lexa, love, don't let them kill you. Don't believe in anything they tell you. You have to live. Survive. Love is weakness, because once you're exposed to that thing, you start seeing things, like your dead loved ones in hallucinations. These visions... They will kill you from the inside. Convergence is just another way to divert our attention from what they are actually doing. There is no ethics. They don't care about us._

_“Forget about me, Lexa. Save yourself. Survive, my love.”_

_A “boom!” left a trail of blood on the storage room's wall as a monster burst out from the vent, growling at the computer screen before everything went dark._

Lexa received Costia's final words whilst upgrading the gravity stabilisation system outside the Ark. She watched the broadcast as tears steamed all over her helmet. She almost died from running out of oxygen, until Raven, the Ark's top mechanic and IT woman, spotted her from the mechanics' room and floated into the void to bring the broken-hearted woman back to life. 

She needed a month to recover in the Ark's medical area, under the care of Clarke Griffin, one of her best pals and the sub-chief medical officer on the Mother Station.

But Lexa still remembers _everything_. She has been seeing _everything_ since the last time Costia landed back to the Ark on her biannual visit. 

She wonders what is happening to her mind and sanity.


	2. A Prophetic Encounter.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lexa sees weird things, Clarke is super caring, and Raven showcases her bad-ass hacking skills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kudos, guys!

Lexa gets out of her bed wearily and starts her morning routine. Shower. Breakfast. Dress up. Go to the engineers' room. _Wait._

She might not head to the engineers' room immediately this morning. She may talk to a doctor about her headache and nightmares. Someone who could help.

_Clarke._

\- - -

Clarke Griffin has been Lexa's main psychological counsellor and support base since the Woods' demise and Costia's suicide. Sometimes, Lexa has a feeling that Clarke is more than just a good pal to her. Clarke has been there for Lexa when they were younger, and when Lexa's family kicked the bucket on Aegis VII. 

Although Clarke is one year Lexa's junior, her visage visibly bears the marks of irrefutable intelligence and incontestable maturity. Clarke always knew what she wanted to become, and under her parents' guidance, she was already predetermined to be successful, as she is right now. Some people gossip about her, thinking that where Clarke is now is just another outcome of corruption to climb the system's ladder; however, the Griffins have never retained a piece of Unitologist propaganda. They focus on their duty, instead, which is to save people – Abby's and Clarke's duty, and make the Ark sustainable for all its residents – Jake's duty. They have remained allegiant to their ethics and belief: _Unitology is bullshit._

Unfortunately, their atheism was what cost Jake Griffin's life. Facing the Unitologists' influence, Jake found himself trapped in a conspiracy against the Authority; he was accused of planning a terrorist attack to destroy the Ark's air filtration system. But, was the accusation a tad contradictory to Jake's _real duty_? 

He was eventually floated on the Chancellor's order. Prior to his death, Jake murmured to his family in an embrace that he had discovered something which could potentially annihilate all life forms on the Ark, let alone in space, and advised his family to continuously question the Authority's motives, the Church's in particular. Due to time constraint, he couldn't have a longer last moment with them. 

His wife and daughter watched he die. 

And the grudge is still _there_.

Jake's sentence was the motivation for Abby to become a Council's member, to change the system from within. But on account of isolation and helplessness, she was merely an easy pawn to be overcome by the Chancellor and the Council. 

Jake's death affected Clarke as deeply as Lexa. For Clarke, it was both a political and personal matter, yet, for Lexa, it was specifically a personal matter. She lost her tutor in engineering at age 21, and he was like a father figure to her. The vacuum which he left in the engineers' room was quickly palliated by Lexa's brilliance. But, since then, Lexa has promised Jake to be there for his daughter, to support her through the sorrowful period. Lexa still wonders all the time if she has been there enough for Clarke.

Back in time, during Clarke and Lexa's first cycle of training, they were, undoubtedly, the best students of their class, or, rather, the best rivals. They found so much pleasure and joy in competing against each other, yet also completing each other with what they had known and their inquiries. They were the perfect adjacent pieces in the puzzle of higher knowledge, the perfect companions in the quest to seek higher things. 

Their epistemological rivalry ended as they parted separate ways to pursue their dreams at age 15. But their friendship became stronger than ever.

\- - - 

The first person to whom Lexa woke up was Clarke. The beeping sound of the cardiac monitors and sound of air travelling through the respirator's tubes were all Lexa could hear. 

Clarke was standing beside Lexa's bed and holding Lexa's hand. 

“Lexa? Can you hear me? Lexa?”

“Cl–Clarke?” She opened her eyes, swollen from fatigue and grief. “Wh–Why am I not dead...yet?” 

Clarke shot Lexa a brief smile. “You idiot,” she shook her head. “Raven brought you back to life.” 

Lexa looked confused. She was certain that she was free-floating and ready to die outside of the Ark's breathable zone. 

“R–Raven? The mechanic who can make things go boom?” 

“Yeah, Raven. You better thank her later. Anyway, why were you out there? Your safety cord was cut and you were running out of oxygen. You could have died, Lexa...,” Clarke frowned. “What was the last thing you remember?” 

Lexa let out a heavy cough. Her eyes were still sore from sobbing and her throat still felt lumpish from shrieking. She tried to get up, but Clarke quickly gestured her not to do so. 

“Cl–, I–, Costia,...,” tears streamed down her face as she uttered her deceased love's name. “Clarke, I–...,” her lips trembled incessantly. 

Clarke gazed at Lexa sympathetically. “I'm sorry, Lexa. I heard that too,” she fondled Lexa's hand with her thumb. “Do you wish to be alone for a while?” 

Lexa didn't respond, but Clarke could easily read Lexa's mind through her eyes. Clarke just nodded and exited the room to give Lexa some space. 

Lexa just wanted to howl, yet she couldn't find the energy to grieve. She just rolled over to the side and caressed the pendant which Costia had given her last month, as though Costia's soul resided within this piece of metal. 

_Lexa._

_Lexa._

_Don't forget about me._

\- - - 

_Hey kiddo!_

Whilst heading to medical, Lexa hears a familiar voice and turns around just to face the empty corridor leading back to the Ark's main hall. _Why does it sound like–_

“Anya?” She searches the passageway paranoidly for her sister. “Anya, where are you?” 

_It's me, Lexa. It's Costia. I miss you so much..._

“Costia?” She gasps for air after running through the gallery. “Costia? Anya?” 

She suddenly trips over her untied shoelaces and falls to the floor. At the moment of the collision, her head lands on the hard surface turbulently, causing her glasses to slide a few metres away from her body. Red liquid oozes out from her right temple and a sharp pain traverses her brain. Her vision becomes blurry, but she spots two humanoid silhouettes at the end of the gallery. She tries to narrow her eyes to focus on the silhouettes, and it turns out to be...

“Mom? Dad?” 

“Lexa, darling. Our beautiful engineer,” her mother says softly as she looks down at her daughter. 

Her father puts an arm around her mother's shoulders. “We miss you, baby girl.”

Lexa, still lying on her stomach on the floor, has no idea how this strange encounter could happen. Her mouth wide open, she reaches for her glasses and gradually stands up with difficulty. Although her head is still bleeding from the collision, she tries to shrug the pain away just to see her parents again.

“How could this happen? I thought you were dead?” She asks the silhouettes.

They smile at her. “Oh, darling! Your time has arrived!” Her mother extends her hand to Lexa. “It is time now.”

“But, but are you r–real? And it's my time for what?” 

“Join us, Lexa. We are all waiting for you,” her father answers. Her parents both step aside, letting Lexa see Anya and Costia in the background. 

“Kiddo, it's your turn now,” Anya reaches a hand to Lexa. 

“Lexa, my love. Come with us,” Costia emerges to the front, wishing to embrace Lexa. “We are a family now. We're waiting for you to complete us.” 

Lexa slightly shakes her head to ensure that she is not dreaming. Still unable to digest what she is experiencing, she asks the four figures one last time. 

“Am I in heaven? What do I have to do?”

“You're almost there, kiddo,” Anya raises her thumbs up.

“You just have to _make us whole again_ ,” Costia emphasises. 

Lexa is startled upon hearing the mention of the Unitologist phrase from Costia. “Hold on. What? What did you say, Costia?” She takes a step back from her supposedly family. 

“ _Make us whole again_ , Lexa,” Costia repeats. 

“You told me not to trust them! Why are you citing their maxim? What is going, Costia?” 

Lexa receives no answer. The four figures sprint towards her and instantly transform into monster-like phantoms with red eyes and black, hollow body, roaring at the injured woman. She uses her arms to cover her face, yet the phantoms dissolve as they reach where she is standing. 

When she uncovers her face, the corridor becomes empty again. 

She can still harken the echo of Costia's whisper “Make Us Whole Again” in her ear, even though no one is actually next to her. 

“What is happening to me? What–,” she wraps her hands around her head and kneels on the floor, crying. 

Footsteps gently quiver the metal-covered hallway as a blond-haired woman spots someone kneeling ahead. She hears the kneeling person push out desperate sobs into their palms. There are blood stains on the floor, and the person's glasses are tainted with a few drops of blood. _Braided brown hair. Black skinny jeans. Black combat boots. Oh my–_

“Lexa?” The blond woman runs towards Lexa and places a hand upon her shoulder. “Lexa, what happened? Are you hurt?”

Lexa keeps sobbing and feels too powerless to stop the pushing rhythm from her throat, as though a beast is crawling its way out of her body. 

Receiving no response, the blond woman squats in front of Lexa. “Lexa... It's okay... Let me see,” she untangles the sobbing woman's palms to check her face. “You're bleeding. What happened?” She gently lifts Lexa's chin to the right. 

“Cl–Clarke?” Lexa splutters. 

“Look at my finger. Can you follow it?”

Lexa follows Clarke's finger with her eyes. Clarke just nods and proceeds to open her flashlight to check Lexa's pupils. 

“Your pupils are dilated. Let me help you get up and get you to medical,” Clarke instructs as she wraps Lexa's arm over her shoulders. 

Lexa just nods without uttering a word. But these voices of her family won't leave her alone. 

_Time to make us whole again, Lexa._

“Get out of my head!” She yells painfully. She thrusts Clarke's arm aside and accidentally elbows her helper in the face. 

“Lexa!” Clarke shouts as she touches her jaw hurtfully. “Are you hearing voices again?”

The insane woman folds her fingers into fists and clenches her jaw. “Stop!” She tears her hair out as she screams at the empty space behind her. 

“Look at me, Lexa! Look at me!” Clarke grabs Lexa's face and strokes her hair and cheeks to calm her down. “It's Clarke, I'm here. Let me help you,” she shushes. “Take the voices positively, okay? Take it easy.”

Lexa still clenches her jaw, yet, when Clarke runs her fingers through her hair to console her, she lets go of the tension between imaginary beings and herself, and laconically listens to Clarke's soothing words. Tears are just the only thing she can't hold back. 

“You're doing well, Lexa. Breathe. Look at me. Breathe again.” 

There is something about those bright blue eyes... Lexa feels inexplicably at peace when she gazes at Clarke's eyes. They resemble those profound and mysterious oceans on Earth; they look so magnificent from space, from such great heights.

And, perhaps, Clarke's eyes are the only ocean in which Lexa wants to bury her soul.

\- - - 

“Lie still, Lexa. Don't forget to breathe,” Clarke helps Lexa lie onto a bed in the medical area. “I will grab alcohol and a bandage. Be back soon!” 

Lexa obeys silently. She lies down on her back and strokes the pendant pensively. She keeps wondering why her family was telling her to _make us whole again_. Particularly Costia, who told her not to trust the Church in her final moment. And the roar, and _that_ creature at the end of Costia's broadcast... _What was that thing?_

She asks herself whether she should keep attending Sunday masses, even though she has grown slightly sceptical, even disillusioned, with the Church's teaching and tradition since Costia's warning. Nonetheless, she often finds herself stuck in a cyclical feeling of defeat, of confusion; she doesn't understand what is going, and, worse, she feels unable to decipher what Costia was implying. But, _that_ creature, it had to be a warning of something like the End of the World... 

…Or was it the proof that the City of Light truly existed? Was it the proof that the Church's teaching and prophecies actually came to life? Were Titus and Gustus right? 

In the end, as an engineer, she knows that she ought to use her _head_ , and not her heart in dire situations. Yet, when it comes the question of belief, maybe using the head is still not enough... 

She still doesn't know how to reconcile her profession and her religious conviction. 

\- - - 

Clarke returns a few minutes later with a tray containing a bottle of alcohol and a bandage, just to find Lexa staring at the ceiling broodily. She puts the tray on the night table next to Lexa's bed and checks out the wound on her head.

“It's stopped bleeding, your head,” Clarke smiles in relief.

“Your name bears the last name of my family's murderer, you know that?” Lexa blurts out without any expression. 

“Pardon?”

Lexa turns to Clarke this time. “Isaac _Clarke_. Does that name sound familiar to you?” 

Clarke raises her eyebrows. “The one who was thought to destroy Aegis VII twelve years ago?”

“And killed my family.”

“Since when did you trust what comes out of the Authority's mouth? Even after what they did to Costia last October?” 

The doctor's reply sounds vaguely like an advice that Lexa has received. “I don't know,” she hesitantly looks back at the ceiling, playing with her pendant. “I just don't know what to believe anymore...”

Clarke prepares the bandage. “Let's not talk about it, okay? Besides, it was a conspiracy made by the Church.” She pours rubbing alcohol on a sterilised dry cloth. “Now, prepare for disinfection! It's going to hurt for a few seconds.” 

“Ouch!” Lexa groans. 

“Told you! Be still.” 

Clarke wraps the bandage around Lexa's head. “Do I need to bubble wrap you next time, Miss Woods?” she jokes. “Or maybe put a 'fragile' sticker on your forehead?” 

“Thank you, Clarke. For everything,” Lexa smiles. 

“You're welcome,” the doctor smiles back. “By the way, is it me, or the way you thank people just sounds like you're about to die?” She leans her head to the left and frowns. 

Lexa snorts. “Death is not the end, Clarke. I think I've seen it.” 

Clarke pouts and nods in mockery. “Right. Unitologist bullshit... You're acting like one of those prophets at the Church. Are you sure the collision didn't cause an intelligence deficit?” 

“No, I'm serious, Clarke,” Lexa sighs. “I–I saw my parents, Anya, and C–Costia. I saw them in the gallery. In persons. They felt so...real. They were talking to me!”

Clarke gives Lexa a curious and sceptical look. “But they're gone?”

“I know, right? It was a strange encounter. They even told me it was my time to 'make us whole again'. I don't even know what that means apart from the Church's teaching. Like what Titus and Gustus told me.”

As Lexa utters the phrase “ _Make us whole again_ ”, Clarke senses a wave of chill traversing her spine. She looks upward and sighs, as memories of her long-gone father suddenly return, because... 

“My father's last words were ' _Don't make us whole again_ ',” the doctor exhales. “He said that to my mother and me before getting floated. I don't know why it was different from what the Church had been advertising, but it must have been some sort of warning...,” she pauses. “Wait! Your 'family' told you the phrase?”

“Yeah, they did. In the gallery.”

Clarke walks around the room. “But they're just visions! They're not real! But my dad, he told us the opposite before he died. He died from an accusation without evidence. He must have known something. Maybe Costia knew something was wrong, too!” 

“Am I crazy, Clarke?” 

Lexa's question seems to break Clarke's stream of thoughts about her father and the Authority-made conspiracies. Yet, Clarke ceases her circle-running and approaches Lexa to hold her hand.

“No, no, don't say that. You're _not_ crazy. But what you're experiencing right now, the visions, the headache, the nightmares, it fits my father's description of those exposed to the Marker for too long,” she glances down at the floor to think. “Have you recently been exposed to the Marker?”

Lexa frowns in bewilderment. “The Holy Artifact? As in the statue at the Church?” 

“No, not that one,” Clarke shakes her head. “A real Marker. It's red and it's huge.”

“There's no Marker on the Ark, just on P–Polaris. But P–Polaris is...gone...,” the engineer stutters. 

Clarke places a hand on her forehead in total disappointment. “Lexa, that's exactly what the Church wants you to believe. They hide everything, even if it puts us in danger. They don't care about us and blindly follow the path to Convergence, whatever it means. I don't know what the Authority is doing, but something is not right, from my father's journal.”

Lexa stays silent and ponders on Clarke's words. She understands that Clarke has had enough with the Authority, yet she just wishes to test her pal's firm opinion to mirror her own, to see whether her religious belief might be shaken. She also wonders whether Clarke has seen visions of her father, or heard her father's voice floating in the void, in spite of the absence of an actual Marker on the Ark. Lexa had spotted Jake a few times last month, and he seemed to instruct her the exact same thing that her family wanted her to do today. 

_Maybe Clarke is right. Something is indeed strange._

But, after all what she has retained from the Authority, isn't it strange in space?

\- - -

Lexa rests for a while and decides to go back to the engineers' room, yet Clarke voices her concerns about Lexa's state of mind. Lexa insists that she is fine now and wants to finish upgrading the gravity stabilisation system. 

Clarke eventually lets her pal go after a short exchange. 

Clarke is stubborn, and after what she has seen today, she doesn't think she can leave Lexa alone henceforth. Especially in the void. She doesn't want to sound like she doesn't believe Lexa or thinks that her pal is unsound in the mind, although her sarcasm to point out the Church's idiocy might have given the impression that she was being sceptical of the engineer's words. But her worries are genuine and it pains her to see Lexa get hurt again. She has lost track of all the times Lexa visited her in the medical wing, whether it be a headache or a nightmare. But visual hallucinations, this time, they are unexpectedly...new. 

She picks up the radio and dials someone to watch over Lexa.

\- - -

Lexa strolls from the medical wing to the engineers' room, this time without any violent visions of her family. She ruminates over Clarke's scepticism to the Authority and wonders whether she could be as cynical as her pal, albeit she has started cultivating disillusionment in her mind, following secrecy over her family and Costia's deaths. She longs for an answer, yet, any act of contestation or rebellion against the Authority will certainly jeopardise her career, and even put her life at risk. She just doesn't want to end up like...Jake. 

She doesn't want to be a hero. She just wants to...do her duty.

She reaches the door to the engineers' room. She pulls out her access card to open the door, just to find– 

“Raven? I didn't expect you in the engineers' room...,” Lexa is taken aback by the presence of Raven, _a mechanic and hacker_ , in her workroom. _Please don't mess anything up..._ Lexa prays as she stands frozen at the sliding door. 

“Hey Lexa! How's it going? Well, your doctor friend told me to watch over you, because she doesn't want you to be a freestyle space-walker again...,” Raven greets the engineer.

Lexa raises her eyebrows and crosses her arms, unconvinced. “But you're a mechanic and a hacker... What if you mess something up? Like the gravity stabilisation system and–”

“Relax, Lex!” Raven cuts her off cheerfully. “Theoretically, you and I are not the same. Your title may be more prestigious than mine... Practically, we are of the same kind. We both fix stuff, sometimes make things go boom. It happens, but we fix what's broken and upgrade things when needed. You're born for this, same as me, Lex,” she winks. “And also, if you need to get around some broken things on the computer, I can help!” 

Lexa smiles embarrassingly at her own condescension. Sometimes, she takes things too seriously, but now, with Raven, she should be more cheerful and respectful to the older woman. Everybody can learn from anybody, no matter the profession, and Raven is more experienced, after all... 

“Well, you see, I wasn't really born to be an engineer... It's more of a question of nurture, I guess...,” the engineer scratches the back of her head. “My parents raised me this way, so I was conditioned to think this way, to become an engineer. So it's not really in my nature, you see... Just...nurture,” she shrugs. 

Raven smirks and shakes her head. “Alright, nerd. We know... Now stop with your philosophical ramblings and tell me what I can help!” 

Lexa nods and opens a transparent closet to take out her space engineer RIG. “Suit up! It's time for a walk in space!” 

“Wow wow! Hold on! How about you stay here and tell me what to fix? I don't want to make your gal pal worried in the medical wing... It's not like she doesn't have any patients to look after...,” the mechanic suggests.

Lexa sighs and snaps back. “Clarke is _not_ my gal pal. I'm not ready to be with anyone, not yet. Now, what do _you_ know about gravity stabilisation?”

The mechanic laughs mockingly. “It's just cords and circuits and tools, right? I'm good at maintenance. Just tell me what to repair,” she gets inside the suit. “Oh, and by the way, someone's got a chronic case of pride and prejudice in this room... I might not want to be contaminated... Time for quarantine!” Raven closes her helmet and proceeds to the stabilising room. 

Lexa squeezes her lips shut and exhales loudly through her nostrils. She has no idea whether she should act resentfully or thankfully towards Raven. Parts of her still think that Raven should have let her die just outside of the stabilising room from oxygen deprivation, yet, on the other hand, parts of her have internalised gratitude for receiving something from someone, specifically when it comes to saving someone's life. Such a belief was cultivated within her by her parents at a very young age. _Maybe gratitude is a good thing._

But either way, dead or alive, she is still _close_ to her family. 

What may have changed is _how_ they _appear_ through her eyes. 

“Lexa? Pride and Prejudice? Darcy? Nerd? Hey!” Raven communicates with Lexa via the RIG monitor.

Raven's face pops up on Lexa's RIG monitor, but it is not until Raven calls her “Nerd?” that the engineer is juddered out from her rumination. 

“Sorry, Raven. I zoned out...” 

“It's okay, I can understand. Sucks not to be out here for a day huh?”

“No, not that... It' just... Nothing.” 

“Alright... Just tell me where to reach now.”

The engineer raises her eyebrows and blinks a few times to evade from her state of thoughtlessness. “Yeah sure! Uh...,” she scratches her chin. “Can you see the box to the left of the sliding doors?” 

The mechanic looks away from her RIG monitor. “Just right here!”

“Good,” Lexa nods. “Now open it with the screwdriver. You'll see a dozen of cables inside.”

Raven removes the screws with the whooshing sound of the solar-powered screwdriver. Once the screws are out, she puts them tidily in a small pocket on the front arm of the suit. “Now that's a lot of cables...” 

Lexa shrugs. “Well, Jake had designed it and I inherited the system... He was distrustful of computerised systems that could easily be overridden by just a few clicks on the keyboard. Hacking could put all lives on the Ark in danger.”

“Come on, Lexa. Do you want a safe shortcut or do you want this to take forever?” 

Raven spots a small panel on which is imprinted a cog sign. “Hold on! I think I found a hacking panel! There's the same sign all over the Ark for overriding things with a computer.”

“What?” Lexa voices in disbelief. “But Jake didn't show m–”

“Do you want the job done or not?” The mechanic seems fed up with Lexa's old-fashioned way. 

The engineer intertwines her fingers and places her interlaced palms on the top of her head. “Okay, go ahead. I trust you,” she smiles reluctantly. 

Lexa does not know that the hacking panel has been present for ages. Obviously, Jake passed away too early before he even had the time and dedication to teach Lexa how to hack certain computerised programmes to accelerate the upgrade. Jake had mentioned once to Lexa, in theory, how to activate the Kinesis module to facilitate her work in space-borne construction or in environments where machinery wasn't welcome. But theory remains in theory, and she has never experienced the Kinesis theory in practice... She should have known how to manipulate with Kinesis by now, since it's an artificial gravity field, meaning it's related to what she is doing... 

Lexa wonders what Jake would have been training her today, had he not been floated two years ago. She has a feeling that she is mistaking an untaught lesson for Jake's alleged distrust of computerised system which runs through the veins of the Mother St–

“Done!” Raven rotates the last screw to hold the box back. 

The engineer glances at her watch. She retorts that it's only been two minutes and asks herself why and how Raven could be that fast. The mechanic is slightly annoyed with the engineer's sluggishness, and offers her two options: _speed and efficiency, or eternity and confusion?_

Lexa just smiles in embarrassment. She should feel ashamed for her initial haughtiness, but ends up thanking Raven incessantly. She then presses a button to open the airlocks for the gal-who-can-make-things-go-boom and invites her to test the speed of her own hacked upgrade. 

As Raven prepares to fly towards the open sliding doors, she catches, at the corner of her eyes, a glimpse of a possible wreckage floating right below the Ark. She tells Lexa to shut the sliding doors for a few minutes so she could check out the mysterious wreckage. 

Worried about her partner's air supply, which reminds her of her own on last year's Unity Day, Lexa protests and instructs Raven to come back to safety. But Raven assures the engineer not to worry, since she is still in possession of two air cans, which will give her about ten minutes to take a closer look at the floating wrecked ship. Besides, she has been space-walking longer than the engineer, so her experience shouldn't be undermined by simple curiosity. 

The closer Raven approaches the wreckage, the clearer she views the ship of the Ark's wreckage recovery team, as their ship's sign is visible, even from afar. She immediately contacts Lexa and even turns around, so Lexa can see the action through the camera on her monitor.

“Why is there a wreckage below the Ark? It must have been brought here by the recovery team from another place, don't you think?” Lexa asks. 

“No idea, but I'm coming back. It seems quite sketchy down there...” 

Raven flies back to the engineers' room as her shoulder and ankle vents open to transport her in the void. She observes that there is not much difference between an engineering suit and a mechanic's suit, after all. It's just a matter of the level of sophistication and safety which each type of suit grants its user.

The first airlock glides open and she lands onto the stabilising room's floor with her magnetic boots. As the gates to space seal shut behind her, a wave of high-pressure air blows heavily upon the mechanic and circulates around the room, thus restoring breathable air to this confined space. The second airlock opens, and Lexa is standing there to greet the Raven. 

“The stabilising speed is still the same. I don't see any changes at all...,” Raven opens her helmet. “Are you sure you told me to do the right thing?”

“I received an order from the Chancellor last week. I just did my duty. With your help,” she extends her fist. “Thanks!” 

Raven fist-bumps Lexa. “You're welcome, Nerd.” 

The moment the two women fist-bump each other, the door behind Lexa slides open. They are both stupefied by the appearance of–

“Good morning, ladies,” Chancellor Jaha, accompanied by his two guards, greets the two women. “Good job upgrading the gravity stabilisation system, Miss Woods,” he eyes Lexa to congratulate her. 

Lexa glances awkwardly at Raven. “Chancellor, you should be thanking this person,” she points at Raven. “She helped me upgrade it, although we don't see any major improvement at all...” 

Raven grins proudly and nods. 

“The future is here, ladies! I have a special mission for you. Please come see me in my conference room in the next hour. Hope to see you there,” Jaha announces quickly and leaves. 

Lexa and Raven look at each other puzzlingly. Raven makes a scornful remark about how Chancellor Jaha is always omnipresent like God – whoever God is – by having access to all rooms and areas on the Ark, even the mechanics' room. She is aware that his agenda is linear with the Church's motivation, but Jaha has mysteriously emerged from a simple Unitologist expert to their brand ambassador, even their cult leader. 

Knowing Lexa has frequented the Church at a young age, the mechanic inquires her about the Church these days and what they are preaching, yet Lexa just shrugs, explaining her recent absences at Sunday masses. Lexa supposes that they are still worshiping the same _thing_ , practising the same old customs... Like _make us whole again_.

“What did we just upgrade, if not the stabilisation for this area?” Lexa queries. 

“No idea, but we'll find out at the meeting. Only Jaha knows.”


	3. The Beginning of The End.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit starts happening as things get brutal.

The hallway leading to the Chancellor's room seems narrower than usual, as it is crowded with elite security guards standing solemnly like frozen statues on both sides and showcasing their threatening, no-nonsense look. Not only are they equipped with enhanced electric tasers, but they also bear in their arms an upgraded pulse rifle and wrap the upper part of their bodies with deep-layered bulletproof vests, thus resulting in the unusual length of their blue health monitor on their back. 

The passageway seems dangerously cold, and the only rhythm that warms it up is the almost uniform breathing pattern of the elite guards. 

Lexa and Raven arrive at the Chancellor's conference room with a sense of intimidation pumping in their chest, just to discover that two other persons are waiting to enter the same room. The small group exchanges “hello” and “how are you?” amongst themselves. Lexa folds her arm across her chest defensively as the surroundings remind her of last year's Unity Day; any shuttle wishing to join Polaris was shielded by the elite force to prevent any grieving person to join their loved ones in the isolated laboratory. The Chancellor's office was equally barricaded to dissolve the distraught crowd longing for an answer, following the Chancellor's decision to detonate Polaris. 

Octavia Blake from farm station and Indra Tonce, the Ark's security chief, discuss the purpose of this unforeseen meeting. The engineer and the mechanic join the speculation party as Raven reveals the wreckage that she has spotted earlier when refurbishing the supposedly gravity stabilisation system for the engineers' area. 

“The Chancellor commanded me to deploy my best force. Here they are, but apparently another group is with the wreckage recovery team. Probably a wrecked ship will be secured and boarded,” Indra shares with the rest of the squad. “My weapons are temporarily confiscated for this meeting, so it must be very important.” 

“Looks more like a military parade to me,” Octavia snorts, darting her eyes around the corridor and folding her arms defensively. 

“Any idea where the wreckage might have come from?” Raven asks, arching a sly brow.

“I heard someone from the Council mention something about 'Tau Volantis'. The information is not confirmed, though,” the security chief replies. 

The three other women shrug without a clue. 

In all of a sudden, the doors to the Chancellor's conference room glide open. Jaha is standing at the other end of the round table in a firm and assertive posture, his arms supporting his body on the table. Around his neck hangs a pendant with a miniature Marker, the sacred symbol, whereas his body is covered in a specialised bulletproof vest which supposedly protects him even against the Plasma Cutter. He signals the guards to escort the women inside, as if he hasn't called enough security officers on duty... But before the summoned group can properly enter the room and sit down, he snaps his fingers to order a few guards to hoover metal detectors over them, just in case of another “terrorist attack” against the Authority. Indra is an exception due to her position as the security chief, and proceeds to sit down on the left side of the room.

Lexa sweats when two guards conduct screening on her, even though she knows that she has nothing to hide. She wonders whether the words “terrorist attack” have been overused to describe any accident with masked motives by the Authority... _Aegis VII. Polaris. Now a herd of unarmed women? Are we all treated like potential terrorists?_

As the guards pronounce the engineer to be harmless, despite wearing a necklace, Lexa sits down nervously on the edge of her seat and hides her hands her the table. She scans the room for Raven, but the mechanic is still being scanned by the metal detectors. 

The scanning machines beep repeatedly as they drift past Raven's right thigh. The guards react violently to the sudden detection as they push her chest against the wall and browse her right pant pocket, to take out a small screw and a screwdriver. 

“What are these? Why do you possess them in this room?” One of them yells at her and shoves the tools close to her face. The other three women watch the scene in total shock. 

Raven, even with the guard's hand pressing on the back of her head, still manages to snarl back at him. “To shove it up your ass, asshole! I'm one of the top mechanics on the Ark and you should go back to school to learn basic shit!”

The guard breathes heavily like an enraged Spanish bull and plunges Raven's head harder against the metal wall. His ears are as red as a tomato. 

“Stop hurting my friend!” Lexa stands up and slaps her hands on the table to defend the mechanic. “She helped me upgrade whatever you had told me to!” 

Jaha senses the situation will quickly deteriorate and instructs his minions to let Raven go. “Just take away the tools and give them back to her at the end of the session.” 

The offended guard furiously tosses the tools into a bin at a corner of the room, whilst Raven tilts her head to the side to relieve the discomfort. 

Raven approaches Indra and whispers into the chief security's ear with a huge, sarcastic grin. “Your guards have the intelligence of an orange seed.” Then, she moves closer to Lexa and takes a sit next to the engineer, with her head held high. 

Octavia finishes her screening and sits down blankly next to Indra. But to Octavia's left and Raven's right, a seat is still left unoccupied. 

Jaha glances at the empty chair, and it seems that someone hasn't made it to the meeting yet.

“Wait for me!” 

As the sliding doors are about to be locked, Clarke sprints like there is no tomorrow to the meeting location. Being late is her worst pet peeve, and as a doctor, being solely one tik-tok late will cost many patients' lives, which she can't afford to happen. But before she has the time to reach her destination, a few guards arrest her and scream “Stop running!” at her. They quickly disable her to the floor by pressing their knees on her back and handcuffing her. 

Lexa, horrified at the blatant and unnecessary act of brutality against her best friend, stands up to kick the chair away and runs to Clarke. “Don't you dare touch her like that!” 

“Lexa?” Clarke, lying forcibly on her stomach on the floor, lifts her head up to see Lexa running towards her in horror. “Lexa! Watch out!”

When Clarke issues a warning to her best friend, a guard tackles Lexa to the ground from her left as she gallops to save her doctor pal. Yet, miraculously, the engineer gathers determination and strength within herself to knock her attacker unconscious with her elbow. “Get away from her you illiterate mosquitoes!” 

Two guards charge their tasers and block the running woman's way. At the sight of the buzzing electric devices, Lexa's shoes squeak on the floor as she tries to stop her pace. The unarmed woman flinches back just to bump into a guard's rigid chest, ready to incapacitate her. 

“Stop it, Jaha! This is wrong!” Octavia shouts at the Chancellor. 

It simply takes a snap of fingers for Jaha to make the guards stop. He has always wished to test Lexa's resilience and strength since her family's demise. He strokes his chin as though he is declaring her fit for the secret mission in his mind. 

“What the hell is this? A beat fest?” Raven directs her arm at the scene and vociferates. 

“This is for your security, ladies. You're here for a top-secret session,” Jaha pauses. “Bring Misses Griffin and Woods inside,” he beckons. 

“By almost beating them up?” Octavia narrows her eyes. “You better tell us what this is! Clearly, we're all in panic with all these guards around us!” 

The guards scan Clarke and escort her to her seat, whereas Lexa's arms are locked behind her back by another guard as she is ushered to her place. 

“Are you hurt?” the engineer inquires her doctor friend as she is escorted past Clarke's seat. 

Clarke shakes her head as her lips set in a grim line. 

When everybody is ready for the session, the Chancellor seals the doors shut.

\- - -

Lexa observes the Chancellor's conference room attentively and seems to zone out from the information session. On the walls of the room hang Renaissance-like portraits of the precursor and founder of Unitology: Michael Altman, the scientist whose discoveries serve the core belief of the religion; and Craig Markoff, the True Founder of the cult. 

Lexa can easily identify them from what she has learnt from Titus's and Gustus's preaching of the holy religion and its origins.

“Where in the Universe is Tau Volantis? And why did you recover a wrecked ship from that place?” Clarke rubs her sore right arm. “With all the money invested in the recovery, you could have improved the Ark's medicine-distribution system!”

“That doesn't matter for now, Miss Griffin. The wreckage is already here,” Jaha replies calmly. 

“And the gravity stabilisation system is supposed to stabilise that wrecked ship below the Ark? Similar to planet-cracking?” Lexa asks, remembering the futile upgrade.

“Exactly, Miss Woods,” Jaha smirks vainly. “You'd never have disappointed your parents, I'm sure.”

The engineer's cheeks turn red from irritation at the mention of her parents. Particularly Jaha's mention, since he has been hiding the truth from her. 

“We have drones to deploy, Sir. We don't know what's at stake. There might be explosives on board,” Indra proposes. 

“The gravity on the ship is broken and must be restored for further inspection. We also need to collect samples of specimen scattered all over the ship. Until then, our drones will be utterly useless,” the Chancellor shakes his head. “It's time to prove your worth, ladies. Dedication and sacrifice are the keys to the City of Life. Miss Blake, you'll be in charge of the collection of lifeforms' samples,” he points at Octavia, who clenches her jaw and squirms in her chair in boredom. “Miss Tonce, your job is to secure the place,” he glances at Indra who nods back obediently. “Doctor Griffin, you do your usual duty on this ship. Misses Reyes and Woods, you ought to restore gravity on the ship and retrieve audio logs on the ship to find out what happened.”

Lexa shoots Clarke a confused look, just see Clarke shrugs back at her. When she glances at Raven, the mechanic displays an unconvinced expression, even doubt about their instantaneously assigned mission.

“May the next step to human evolution be achieved by you, ladies. All praise Altman,” Jaha dismisses the meeting.

\- - -

Perplexed, Lexa comes out of the conference room with her head filled with memories of Unitologist teachings. _All praise Altman. The next step to human evolution._ Jaha's discourse contained all Unitologist metaphors and readings alluding to the next step for humankind, yet for what ends? 

The other women also wonder what level of importance this wreckage coming from a far-away planet holds as they regain their confiscated tools and weapons. Clarke worries that her secret mission may interfere with her _usual duty_ , even prevent her from being her mother's right hand in medical. Jackson used to help Abby when Clarke had to travel to another section of the Ark on emergency calls, but he has been missing for a few months now, specifically after the termination of Polaris. 

When it comes to Octavia, being apart from her boyfriend Lincoln may be one of the worst things which she will have to face. In spite of the fact that they work in separate environments, Octavia on farm station, Lincoln amongst the rank of the elite security team, they have always found ways to reconcile their different duties and distance. But even before this information session, Octavia hadn't seen Lincoln since last morning, despite the fact that he is Indra's second. She is even more surprised at the fact that he wasn't present to guard the Chancellor's meeting.

Octavia, along with Monty Green, is devoted to improving the Ark's agricultural system in space. Octavia also succeeded in creating a genetically modified fluorescent butterfly, still being preserved for further study and reproduction, whereas Monty specialises in herb-planting to provide the Griffins resources in alternative medicine, a field which has risen to eminence two years ago on the Mother Station, thus saving costs in fabricating and distributing pharmaceutical drugs.

The agricultural specialist is worried sick about her fighter boyfriend who hasn't sent her any update since yesterday's noon. He was deployed to secure the site of the wreckage. 

\- - - 

Clarke chats with Raven to thank the mechanic for assisting her engineer friend, whilst Lexa is waiting in the hallway, now deserted without a sight of violence. The elite guards immediately followed Indra after the dismissal of the session, and headed to the elevator transporting them to the bottom level of the Mother Station. The engineer keeps glancing around the corridor and glances back at Clarke again to see if the doctor is still stroking her arms. She bears in her mind bad thoughts about this forthcoming mission, based on her analysis of Jaha's metaphorical discourse. Parts of her want to tell Clarke that they should think twice about Jaha's order, yet the remnants of Unitology in her stimulate her adrenaline and the thrills of discovering new things in space, which could help her answer several questions about _the next step in human evolution_ , _the City of Life_ , and _the Convergence_. 

“Hey!” Clarke places her hand on the brooding engineer's shoulder. “Are you alright?” 

Clarke's touch gives Lexa a jolt, interrupting her stream of thoughts, but with those bright blue eyes on sight, she forces out a lackluster smile. “Are you alright? Did those illiterate mosquitoes hurt you?”

“Why do you always find funny words to insult people?” The doctor laughs, slightly shaking her head. “I'm fine, but they left imprints of their palms on my arms... I didn't expect this level of brutality, though.” 

Lexa rubs her palm nervously on her cheek. “I don't know Clarke. I just have a very bad feeling about this mission... Can we call it quit?”

Clarke tries to keep her hopes up. “There may be survivors on the ship, Lexa. What if those survivors could tell us what happened? Besides, getting out of the Ark for a while might be a great idea! If Jaha won't tell us the truth, we have to find it out ourselves.” 

Lexa exhales. “Yeah, maybe you're right... I miss space-walking and fixing things, too.”

Clarke pinches Lexa's cheek. “You will be! Haven't done it for a few hours and already missing it?”

“See you at the main gates then! I'll go grab my gears!” Lexa waves as they get changed.

A familiar voice sends chills down the engineer's spine as she prepares herself for the upcoming mission.

 _Love is weakness_.

She starts questioning whether it is a bad message to warn her of her _feelings_ for Clarke. 

They are both on a weird mission, she has to admit. _What if Clarke died? What if Clarke appeared in hallucinations like Costia, her parents, and Anya?_

\- - -

The wreckage has been stabilised by the gravitational planet-cracking system at the bottom of the Ark. The planet-cracking system emits blue laser-like rays to hold the ship together by creating an artificial gravity field. The wreckage is now connected to the transportation lobby on the Ark with a special elevator that resembles a giant tube, leading to its main exit door on the right side. The “docking” takes about twenty minutes, and, for safety reason, the wrecked ship cannot be boarded inside the transportation lobby, according to the Chancellor. 

A security crew of a hundred guards, led by Lincoln, has been deployed to secure the site and the “docking” process. Their next mission is to protect the five-women army to collect and retrieve whatever is on-board. The guards, this time, are even more heavily equipped than those securing the Chancellor's meeting; they all wear elite security space suits, with built-in magnetic boots and lifting thrusters to support themselves in zero-G environments, camera and flashlight on the top of their helmet, extra-protection armour, prolonged stasis module, and long-range kinesis module. In their arms rests a force gun, and around their left shoulder hangs the pulse rifle's strap. Attached their duty belt are cutting grenades, meaning that once the grenades are launched, they release laser-like rays to cut the target to pieces. The suits are also decorated with Unitologist symbols and graffiti, making the guards look a little bit like zealots.

Lexa arrives at the checkpoint, wearing an advanced engineering RIG, exclusively provided by the Council, even though she hasn't had any real experience in repairing in hostile environments. It looks bulky on her, considering her lean physique; the multi-layered armour must weight twice than she can carry, but since it's made of titanium, it's supposed to protect her from corrosion, strong magnetic control, and heat. A holographic communication projector can be spotted fixed onto the chest area of her suit, whereas her helmet covers the totality of her face and neck, displaying only four glowing lines in its front indicating from up to down her brows, eyes, nose, and mouth. Her RIG carries built-in stasis attached to her left forearm and hand, which enables her to dilate time and slow down moving objects. The engineer is only allowed to take her 711-MarkCL Rivet gun on-board, for the pure purpose of _drilling and fixing things_ , as the Chancellor ordered. _And magnetic boots. And oxygen storage. That's all._

Lexa opens her helmet to see Clarke standing her to the elevator leading to the wreckage, wearing a gray, low-level E.V.A suit, specialised solely for space travel and moving in zero-G areas, with little armour. It's only padded around the knees and elbows. All suits are endowed with holographic communication, health monitoring system, oxygen storage, and, sometimes, magnetic boots for those who travel into the void, yet Clarke's suit seems the weakest of all. The doctor fetches a small, white medical kit with her which is akin to a messenger bag. 

“Clarke!” Lexa waves at Clarke as she approaches the doctor. 

“Seriously, Lexa... What in the Universe did he give you?” Clarke places her hands on her hips, staring mockingly at Lexa's RIG. 

“Well, it's an advanced engineer suit... For engineers... I also got a rivet gun. Engineering stuff, you know...,” she walks around Clarke to analyse her suit. “Your RIG seems a bit...fragile. Are you sure he gave you the right one suited for that wreckage out there?” 

“I don't know. I know nothing about suits... But look!” Clarke opens her medical kit. “I have a plasma cutter! It might be needed for surgeries.”

Lexa takes the cutter in her hands and observes it attentively. “It looks different from what I have, even though the principles remain the same...” 

“Not all things are designed _only_ for engineers. Variants exist for a reason,” Clarke takes the cutter back and puts it carefully inside her bag. 

As Clarke closes her kit, Raven greets the two women. “Hey you! Seems like a lawsuit is not here!” She then pats Lexa's back. “We're wearing the same suit! Equal for once! Maybe not, 'cause I have a Ripper,” she winks. 

The engineer looks at her quizzically. “What's a lawsuit, Raven?”

Raven points at the elite guards. “See those minions? They're wearing lawsuits! Suits with Unitologist symbols tattooed all over them, because, y'know, it's Unitologist _law_ ,” the mechanic ridicules the Authority. 

Lexa turns to Clarke to ask the doctor for help, just to the Clarke laugh and high-five Raven. The two agreeing women then look at Lexa and continue laughing. 

“Relax, Pride and Prejudice! It's not true what I say,” Raven gestures Lexa to let it go. 

From afar, Octavia can be seen exchanging a few hugs and kisses with her boyfriend Lincoln, whom she hasn't touched since yesterday's noon. The couple always acts like they are going to be separated for several years. The agricultural specialist has, apparently, just found out that her boyfriend will have to stay on the Ark, since Indra is away, and the Mother Station needs a security leader. _As if they don't have enough_.

Indra is commanding her troops to get in line and prepare for embarking on the wrecked ship. Her suit is the only one that stands out, resembling a Special Forces suit for only special missions. It has the fiercest and the most intimidating exterior, probably due to its skeleton-looking helmet, red, glittering eye holes, and solid combat armour. It doesn't just look like any elite security suit; it looks like a military-grade exosuit with arm guards, gauntlets, padded leggings, and a protective underlayer made of some bulletproof material. She is holding what seems to be an AL-9 Clear Cutter, undoubtedly the most upgraded version of the ordinary pulse rifle. In addition to her primary weapon, she is also armed with a Javelin gun. No one knows why, _except_ the Chancellor. _Her duty to serve and protect_. 

“Officer Dolores, please lead the way,” Indra orders. “Officer Tremblay, your group has to escort our specialists,” she pauses and looks at the last group. “Officer Neville, follow me.” 

“Yes Commander!” The three officers respond in unison. 

An elite guard from officer Dolores leads the way and opens the elevator. Her group has to arrive to the wrecked shuttle first to secure the actual site. Once it's judged to be secure enough, officer Tremblay's and Indra's group will embark on the wreckage. 

Octavia runs to the group after several minutes next to Lincoln. “Sorry, I wanted to make sure he was alright.”

“No probs, dude,” Raven says. “What did he give you?”

Octavia opens her bag. “Uhm... Glow worms... It makes no sense since we have flashlights...”

“Unitologist logic,” Clarke spits as she eyes Raven who seems to concur. 

Lexa just shrugs it off, but deep down, she is going through a major existential crisis regarding her faith and where her conviction, even her loyalty, lies. She would feel like a failure if she betrayed Gustus and Titus who took the time to raise her following her family's demise and became somehow her parental figures throughout the years. She wants to be able to agree with Clarke and Raven, yet contesting Titus and Gustus would be the equivalent of disrespecting her own parents and what they had instructed her. On the other hand, Unitology has been hiding the truth in the darkness, hence she doesn't know whether she could trust them. 

_Trusting your friends, or the Authority?_

The four ordinary women are surrounded by people armed with killer weapons, and, blatantly, they feel intimidated. Lexa is slightly shaking as she grows more and more nervous; she is supposed to feel triumphant right now, like the D-day embarking taught in History class several years ago. She should be feeling heroic as she will be stepping into unknown territory and retrieving whatever is at stake. She should be feeling confident and strong and like an explorer.

Except that she has a _very_ , _very_ bad feeling about this mission.

But she knows that she _has_ to protect Clarke like she has promised Jake. If anything goes wrong. 

Clarke, contrariwise, is pumped with thrill for this mission. Saving people and rescuing survivors are what she looks forward to. Although she knows that the chances of finding survivors are not high, since they would have broadcast an emergency message long ago to the Ark, she still tries to keep her hopes up and do her _usual duty_. She keeps reminding the squad that if they spot an injured person, they must send for her immediately. 

“Everything's clear, Commander!” Officer Dolores reports as her group reaches the ship's main entrance. “Gravity indeed needs to be restored. Oxygen and power as well.” 

Indra gestures officer Tremblay to be ready to call the elevator as his group encircles the four specialists. 

“Anything abnormal?” Indra asks officer Dolores via the monitor. 

“It smells like death here, Commander. We hear echoes of grunting noise, like animals.” 

“Send your people to browse the area. And be careful.” 

Officer Dolores instructs her guards to stay vigilant as they make small steps into the darkness. They all have their flashlight and camera turned on to record the process of retrieval. Something is moving inside the vent above their head, but they have no idea what it is. They point their pulse rifles upward and discover a broken vent exit as they step upon the debris on the floor. 

“There's a hole in the ceiling!” One guard warns. “I hear strange noise! Something's crawling up there!”

Everything is floating around the scouting group, debris, a few corpses, dismembered limbs, oxygen tanks. The air is condensed and heavy as oxygen has yet to be brought back to the ship. The sound of the guards' magnetic boots is parallel to the sound of crawling inside the vent. 

The grunting sound becomes clearer and clearer as the guards reach the door to the control room. Separated by just a layer of transparent glass, one guard points his pulse rifle at the glass to see inside the room. He catches a glimpse of a humanoid creature, yet as soon as the rays of flashlight reaches its head, it quickly disappears. 

“I saw something!” The guard shouts. “A person maybe!” 

“Where?” Officer Dolores asks. 

“Inside the control room! But it disappeared!” 

“Can you open it?” 

“No, Ma'am. We need a specialist. Without power we can't activate anything.” 

Suddenly, a vent bursts open as a butterfly-looking creature lands upon a guard's head, using its nail-like claws hidden under its wings to stab through his arms as blood spurts out uncontrollably down his fingers. The man screams in pain as he writhes his last breath. The creature remains stuck onto the dead man's head; it has human skin, but its exterior looks rotten and hairless, letting show its veins and a few infected spots. Its inside displays a red layer of exposed skin and organs, and its claws, close to its mouth, are long and pointy enough to kill the guard with just a spear through the head. 

“What the fuck! Shoot that fucking thing!” Officer Dolores orders in panic. 

The closest guards to the murdered man open fire, yet the creature still lingers onto his head. It is not until the thirtieth bullet that the creature ceases grunting and moving altogether.

“Commander! We have a situation here!” Officer Dolores contacts Indra. “We just got attacked by a weird th–”

The dead guard resuscitates before Dolores even has the time to finish her message to Indra. “His” body wriggles side to side as “his” upper limbs sprout new, sharp limbs which resemble big swords fixed to “his” arms. “His” helmet splits open, exhibiting “his” rotten flesh and bloody face with fallen teeth and long tongue. “He” stands up on “his” newly blossomed sword-like limbs and charges towards the herd of horrified guards. 

“Hey! Stop!” One guard yells. But the walking dead man doesn't stop and lets out guttural sound. 

“What the fuck is this?” 

“Fire!” Dolores commands. 

The first line of guards opens fire at the creature's chest, but pulse rounds don't seem to deal any damage to this unstoppable thing. On the contrary, it charges even faster towards the guards as its arms slash around in a threatening move. The creature manages to slash a dozen of guards' arms off as they shriek in pain. It doesn't even seem to be thwarted by the storm of bullets and carries on with its mass killing. One guard's pulse rifle runs out of ammo; when he ceases the shooting to reload, the creature's arms gash his head off and slice his body in half. 

“Officer! We have to retreat! This thing won't stop!” A guard in the front screams.

In all of the sudden, Dolores' bullet hits the creature's right arm, thus detaching it in the bulletstorm. But with its left arm still in action, it launches towards a few guards and spikes their chest. But another bullet hits the creature's arm, engendering it to collapse onto the ground, presumably dead. 

The guards approach the immobile creature with caution. One of them kicks its head gently to see if it's really dead. The corpse doesn't move anymore, but the damage it has left pushes Dolores to request a retreat order from the Commander. 

“Commander! D– y– read?” The signal comes interrupted. 

“Dolores, report,” Indra replies.

“Comma–. We– we...attacked...lost mor– than half of–. There–there's a creature...”

“Dolores! Repeat!” 

“We–...retreat...” 

“Retreat? We can't! The Chancellor refuses!” 

Before Dolores even has enough time to respond, a disrupted scream can be heard from the other line. The signal goes off as Indra fails to reconnect to Dolores' holographic monitor. 

“Dolores! Are you there? Dolores?” Indra tries desperately to know her deployed group's status. “Listen up, there is a report of strange creatures down there. It's not even safe for us to go down. But the Chancellor refuses to cancel this mission. Are you with me to destroy whatever massacred out group and retrieve whatever is needed down there?” She turns to the rest of the squad. 

Lexa whispers to Clarke that she has had a very bad feeling about this mission, but Clarke retorts that she needs to check out the guards down there if they need medical attention. They are dying and a doctor needs to be sent down. 

“This is a suicide mission,” Raven protests. “I'm not going down that hell hole!” 

“Me neither,” Octavia concurs. “Until we know what's on-board. Why can't the Jaha tell us what's going on?”

A voice suddenly announces through the loudspeakers in the transportation lobby. “I want you to go down there and retrieve what I told you to!” Jaha affirms. “You can't quit, people. You're already assigned to this mission. You must bring the creature and the holy artifact back to the Ark, if it's still there!” 

Indra looks nervously at the squad as she gestures officer Tremblay to call for the elevator. As the doors slide open, blood stains cover the three metal walls of the elevator, and its vent is burst open wide with debris on the floor.

The Commander swallows heavily as she stares at the blood-covered elevator and holds her weapon firmly. “Let's go find out whatever is down there.”


	4. In Cold Blood.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forced exploration of the wrecked shuttle. This is just the first suicide mission.

The elevator transporting the group to the wrecked ship has an exceptional capacity, which can carry up to thirty person. It only takes two turns for the entire squad to reach the wreckage; Indra's group leads the way first, then officer Tremblay safely escorts the specialists aboard. 

The metallic odour of blood almost asphyxiates Lexa, who is never used to dealing with the red liquid at all. However, it doesn't just smell like human blood; it smells like dead humans' blood which have abruptly decomposed, like human blood whose living cells have completely been destroyed and replaced with alien entities. 

The group enters the main entrance of the wrecked ship as they trudge on the floor covered in sticky, smelly, encrusting even, dead tissue, in addition to the lack of gravity on-board. Condensed liquid also falls upon the floor from the ceiling, seeming to be enveloped by viscous webs of tissue. It smells like death and cadavers on this ship. A few dead corpses lie stuck to the sticky floor, whereas dismembered limbs stay scattered around the main entrance. 

Clarke holds Lexa's hand as they make it through the main entrance. Until now, no sign of survivors yet. 

“Maybe you're right, Lexa. This mission is...weird,” Clarke whispers. 

“I just need to find the control room to restore power. I can't see anything,” Lexa replies, intending to calm Clarke down. 

Octavia opens her bag and squats to collect samples of the tissue and the blood spurting out of dismembered limbs. 

Raven stops to look at a sign inscribed on the wall of the main entrance, which is barely visible, considering the growth of dead tissue on the ship. “Property of Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces,” the mechanic reads aloud. “Hey! I think this is where the ship came from. Any idea what it means?” 

The guards point their flashlight at the sign as Indra approaches it. “So this is on Tau Volantis, like the Chancellor said,” the Commander says. 

“Commander! The control room is here!” A guard signals. 

The front-line guards advance towards the control room's door to secure it, but the panel displays a “Locked” holographic sign. 

Lexa scans the hall for a power plug, since she has spotted supply lockers and benches at the main entrance. She notices a bigger door with the “Locked” sign again, but to its left, there is a red, empty power socket embedded into the wall, which she has never seen before on the Ark. There are blue, glowing electrical cables connected to the socket, yet without the battery, power cannot be returned to the entire ship. 

“Has anyone seen a block of battery for this type of socket?” The engineer voices her question. 

Indra immediately sends for her guards to search for the battery described by Lexa. Octavia is browsing the lockers in the main entrance for new things to collect. As she stumbles upon the last openable locker, she finds a big, gray block with a bolt sign engraved on its front. 

“I think I found it,” Octavia calls. 

The engineer makes her heavy steps towards the locker. “It looks heavy. How are we going to take it out?” 

The guards, upon Octavia's call, proceed to fetch the huge block out, yet to no avail. Raven, returning from where the “Property of Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces” sign situates, shakes her head at the sight of the dim-witted guards. 

“Hey you orange seeds!” The mechanic addresses the guards. “How the hell are you gonna plug that thing in without getting electrocuted?” 

The guards stop moving the battery and look at one another confusedly. 

“What's your solution, Raven?” Lexa asks. 

Raven points at her suit's inner palm. “You see this pad?”

Lexa looks at her inner palm. “The thing with a button on it?” 

“Yeah. It's an emitter pad of the kinesis module. You point your hand at the target, press the button, and you pick up heavy objects,” she eyes the block of battery. “Try!”

The engineer glances at her palm to locate the button to make sure that she will press on the right thing. She then turns to the battery, points her hand at it, presses the button, hence successfully picking it up with kinesis. Once the battery is floating, she moves it closer to the power socket, and eventually fits it inside the holed socket. The socket lets out a buzzing sound as the lights on the entire ship seem to be opened. 

Lexa lets out an exhale of relief and thanks Raven for helping her. She inquires the mechanic about the functionality and principles of the kinesis module. The mechanic answers that the emitter projects an artificial gravity field to grab objects, similar to the gravity stabilisation system which is holding the wrecked shuttle altogether. The engineer looks down at the floor, displaying a sad facial expression. She reveals that Jake didn't have the chance to teach her how to use kinesis, yet Raven just smiles to comfort her and encourages her to restore gravity. 

A guard presses on the holographic button to open the sliding door to the control room. Instinctively, five guards crouch quickly to secure the room for Lexa to get inside. There is a locked exit door inside the control room, which may lead to other places on the wrecked shuttle. 

Lexa types something on the keyboard as she gazes at the computer screen to deactivate zero-G. After two minutes, oxygen and gravity both return to the shuttle as an automated voice articulates “Gravity restored”, allowing the crew to open their helmet, although most of them don't, for safety reason.

When the engineer is about to exit the control room to go back to the main entrance, an emergency alarm is somehow triggered, probably due to a security breach. Yellow alarm lights rotate unstoppably as slight darkness falls upon the main entrance. She attempts to remove the security lockdown, but everything seems to be deactivated. The monitor turns yellow, just like the security lights in the main entrance, making it impossible to access the database. Lexa catches a sight of an audio log next to the monitor and grabs it. 

The guards around Lexa try to shoot the door open, yet doors on shuttles fabricated by the Government are supposed to be immune to gunfire. 

In all of the sudden, the vents above Indra's group are crashed open; from the holes, several tall humanoid creatures with sword-like arms jump down to chop off several guards' heads and slice through their armour. Blood gushes out to all directions and blurs the transparent glass separating the control room and the outside. Lexa watches the scene in fright from inside the control and yells into the microphone for Clarke and her friends to run and escape through the big gliding doors right next to them, in addition to her hopeless “This is goodbye, for now”. Clarke appears to be screaming something back, something like the engineer's name, but Lexa can only vaguely read the motion of the doctor's lips, because the control room is soundproof. 

A monster jumps down the vent into the control room, killing two guards in the process. The engineer tells the three other guards to leave through the only exit door on sight, ensuring them that these creatures may not be able to open the sliding doors. Growling noise and painful screams of the victims are all she can hear in this slim moment between life and death. 

\- - -

Clarke's eyes open wide as she witnesses the first Necromorph attack on this wrecked ship. 

She doesn't even what those creatures are, nor where they come from. They just keep descending from the vents and cutting off people's heads and stabbing throuugh their multi-layered protective armour. 

These things look like they used to be humans, judging their posture and open skeleton. But their arms and their deformed faces bear no sign of humanity at all. They smell like rotten flesh, as though they were dead weeks ago, but somehow, in some ways, were revived by “miracle”. Their resuscitation doesn't seem “miraculous”, however. Their teeth, there is none, but growing from their mouth are a long tongue and tiny and bloody tentacles that bite the victims' neck, thus killing them faster by tearing apart the jugular veins. As more and more corpses pile up in the middle of the main entrance, the hall smells like a mixture of flesh blood and vomit. 

She can hear Lexa's voice via the loudspeakers, telling her to proceed through the door right behind her and run. She can barely see the engineer's silhouette inside the control room as the transparent glass is now stained with flesh blood. 

The doctor detects a whimper on the floor as a guard with his arms chopped off reaches for her in his suffocated voice. Doing her innate duty, Clarke immediately squats to check out the badly wounded guard, but, when she is about to touch him, an Infector crawls and hops onto his head, spearing its claws through the now dead man's brain and arms. Terrorised by the sudden attack, Clarke falls back with only her arms supporting her body. 

Raven manages to unblock the sliding door for the squad to escape. She instructs Indra to retreat and run for their lives, although most members of the elite force seem adamant, willing to prove their worth and innate heroic values. Notwithstanding, the more blood is shed, the clearer Indra sees that her group can no longer hold these creatures back, and orders an escape to a safer area. 

Octavia launches herself at Clarke to help the doctor up, as a guard manages to shoot a Slasher's limbs apart to prevent an imminent attack on Clarke, before his head is sliced off of his body by another Slasher. 

“C'mon Clarke! Run!” Octavia shouts, grabbing Clarke's waist from behind.

“Lexa!” The doctor refuses to be taken away, still looking at the opposite direction of safety. 

“We'll find her!” Octavia pulls Clarke through the door and snatches a dead guard's pulse rifle _in medias res_. 

Indra fires at a Slasher to push it back as the door slides shut, crushing the same Slasher in half and buying the group time to skedaddle to a safer zone. But the now cut-in-half Slasher still has its upper limbs and endeavours to crawl at her with its slashy arms. It is not until the third fire that Indra succeeds in completely disabling the creature.

The rushing sound inside the ventilation system is what makes their hearts throb, despite escaping the first mortal danger of the mission. 

\- - -

 _This is Officer Aaron Neckbottom, reporting from the Kyler escape shuttle's control room. We made it out of the Sovereign Colonies on Tau Volantis after a Necromorph infestation across the colonies. But, no need to worry, because the creatures that fuel the City of Light have been successfully brought onto our shuttle. They are all contained in frozen cryotubes in the medical area. We are ready to return to Earth, where the original Marker rests, and open the gates to the City of Light. Officer Neckbottom, along with captain Christ Le Chevalier, engineer Amanda Jones, medical officer Isabelle Lang, and twenty crew members. End of log._

Lexa plays the log and runs for her life simultaneously. The guttural sound of chasing monsters won't leave her alone; oppositely, she encounters more and more mutated beasts coming out of nowhere. The three guards attempt to contact the Commander, but communication seems to be interrupted. The wrecked shuttle, in spite of its reported smallness by the Chancellor, presents itself to the engineer as a labyrinth with hidden mortal dangers pursuing her from all directions.

A small, jumpy Necromorph leaps out of a vent and blocks the four-people army's way as they try to reach the sliding doors, presumably leading to the engineers' area of the ship. Lexa follows its moves carefully with her head, and, in a silver lining, she remembers that she is still in possession of the Rivet gun that Jaha gave her prior to embarking this hell hole of a wreckage. 

Whilst Lexa open her bag to reach for the Rivet gun, already loaded with twenty-four rivets ready to deal damage to whatever is ahead, the small, jumpy creature stops in front of the sliding doors and spreads what seems to be its three long tentacles which rest on its back. The tentacles then lean backwards and catapult at the group what appears to be acid; one small ball of acid hits a guard's hand as he screams in pain. The acid burns through his armour as his hand is entirely rusted by the inflammable green liquid.

The engineer, still trying to process what is happening around her, holds her Rivet gun shakingly as she tries to aim at its shooting tentacles; she fires the first shot, which strikes the Lurker's left tentacle, yet with two others still intact, it continues its attack perseveringly. But Lexa is equally persistent and, this time, fires two consecutive rivets at its remaining tentacles, thus defeating it and gaining access to the engineers' room. 

When she enters the engineers' area, the throbbing in her head returns to torment her, as though someone has just slapped a block of concrete on the back of her head. She turns around to see whether the three other guards have made it past the gliding doors, yet only see their dying voices telling her to run. Her hallucinations have just returned. 

“Lexa, my love. You have to make it happen,” “Costia” murmurs softly in front of Lexa. 

The engineer blinks multiple times and shakes her head. “Costia?”

“It's me, Lexa,” “Costia” advances to touch Lexa's face. “Most of the guards are dead and await the City of Light. You must finish the job.”

“What job? Why do you believe in the City of Light?” Lexa screams as she thrusts “Costia”'s hands off of her face. 

Before “Costia” can answer, “she” loses her human appearance as her eyes and her mouth become three holes with yellow rays of light coming out of them. “Costia” lets out a high-pitched, animal-like shriek and “she” traverses Lexa's body. In a gesture of self-defense, the engineer covers her face with her arms and closes her eyes, yet the moment her eyes are open again, “Costia” has vanished. 

Lexa looks around for a sign of her dead lover, but she finds none. Her calling the dead woman's name just attracts more audible crawling movements inside the vent above her head and beneath the metal walls. Detecting that the sound seems to be closer to her, she moves warily towards a possible weapon locker located between a suit storage and an upgrade bench. 

The engineer opens the weapon locker just to discover a Planet Cracker Plasma Cutter lying untouched at the bottom of the locker with a few ammo clips scattered next to it. She quickly grasps the tool and ammo clips and turns to the upgrade bench. 

_I know how to do this_ , she thinks. She refurbishes the clip capacity and reduces the reloading duration to make the best of the Cutter with what she has been tossed into her hands. She also manages to upgrade the duration of her stasis module, as well as the range and speed of her kinesis. Beside the upgrade bench, Lexa picks up a navigation monitor that rests on the floor. _Finally, I'll know where to go!_

As soon as she installs the navigation monitor on her left forearm and turns around to find her way to escape the doomed shuttle, a scorpion-looking Necromorph, with jagged spine spurting out on its back, bursts out from the vent on the ceiling and leaps towards her with its tiny front “paws”, whilst waving its long, spiky tail repeatedly. Its tail curls forward like the attacking move of a scorpion to stab the engineer, but she is rapid enough to dodge the imminent injury. Lexa aims her Cutter at its head covered in blood, on which the most noticeable traits are its protruding, pointy long teeth ready to bite its victims' neck off of their head. However, cutting off its head cannot prevent the creature from launching its tail at her; she has to shoot at the lower area of its spine to chop off its tail, but she has to fire at least five shoots in order to put the creature to rest. 

A few Slashers and Spitters – female variants of Slashers – arrive to assist in the attack. The engineer concludes that she has figured a way to damage, even beat, these mutated creatures permanently.

_CUT OFF THEIR LIMBS. OR WHATEVER THEY USE TO ATTACK._

Lexa keeps the vertical firing option activated on her Cutter, because when she aims at their upper limbs and shoots at those, these Necromorphs collapse rapidly onto the floor, completely dead, even. She has also attempted to chop off their lower torso, yet, in spite of the absence of their lower limbs, they still manage to leap into her direction alive. 

Her Cutter suddenly clicks empty as a sign of hollow ammo clip. She browses the room for anything to reload, but finds nothing. A Spitter flings itself at her to slice her neck open with its right arm, but Lexa, quickly enough, grabs its forearms to resist the attack. The Necromorph uses its mouth to bite her, but she avoids the damage by leaning her head to the left. It smells like vomit and rotten blood, and the creature keeps making guttural sound to intimidate the lean engineer.

 _The torso can be its weakness_ , she realises. She gathers the energy and strength within herself to kick the Necromorph in its lower torso, causing its lower limbs to fall apart. She then thrusts its arms aside, makes a few steps back., and scans the room desperately for ammo.

_Kinesis!_

Lexa instantly remembers the power restoration process with the help of kinesis earlier. _Any object can be picked up and thrown using kinesis._

And she observes that most of these creatures have sword-like arms that can cut anything. She then points her left hand at a detached slashy arm, picks it up, and presses the button a second time to release the limb with so much velocity and power, thus terminating the Spitter's life which was charging at her with its arms. 

As the Spitter ceases moving, the engineer lets her left arm fall down and breathes out in relief. She glances around the room to see what she has done, only to feel the thumps in her head return again. 

\- - - 

Clarke, Indra, Octavia, and Raven arrive at the huge sliding doors, on which is written “Physical Training Area”. 

Octavia asks Indra what a physical training area resembles, and Indra retorts that there are a lot of knife-throwing targets, elements of surprise, obstacles to surmount, and endurance-training equipments. 

“What if those things hide behind the obstacles?” Raven asks. 

“That's why we have to remain _vigilant_ ,” the Commander emphasises. 

“Vigilant? Look how many guards you have left now!” Octavia gestures the squad to look around the passageway, only to find six guards left. “We need to grab weapons and deal with those things ourselves! You can't just keep us unarmed when those creatures are here!” 

The agricultural specialist proceeds to reload her pulse rifle, whereas Raven looks at her Ripper confidently. When it comes to Clarke, she opens her medical kit and fetches her assigned Plasma Cutter to defend herself, instead of saving people. 

“Take my Javelin gun,” Indra hands her Javelin gun to Octavia. “These pulse rifles are useless, unless they're fully upgraded. I think we need to dismember them to kill them.” 

“Thanks,” Octavia puts the rifle onto the floor and takes the Javelin gun. 

Indra says “Go!” as she opens the gliding doors and leads the group through the physical training room. They hear quiet sound of predators stalking their preys like in those nature documentaries which they used to watch as kids. 

In all of a sudden, a target pops up, startling Clarke and pushing her to point her Cutter at it. She exhales in relief as she places her hand on her chest at the sight of the innocuous piece of cardboard. 

Raven detects animal breathing close to her ears, although she can't quite locate the source of the sound. She warns the group to be careful as her finger strokes the trigger of the Ripper, ready to dismember the stalking beasts. 

Indra hears movements around her, but as she points her gun to her left, a hunch-backed, dinosaur-looking Necromorph tosses its head at her and knocks her off her feet. Its style of attack resembles one of a bull, albeit it has no horns, and on its hands spawn long and thin claws. Its ribcage is empty without any organ and exposed as rotten flesh falls to the floor. The Stalker lets out a high-pitched scream at her before going back to hiding again. 

“Beware! Open your eyes!” Indra whimpers as blood flows out on the left side of her belly. 

Clarke crouches and instructs the Commander to press her hands firmly on the wound to prevent blood loss, whereas Raven, Octavia, and the six guards scan the room for a sign of an imminent attack. 

“Use your stasis to slow them down! They're fast!” Raven shouts. 

_Don't die on me_ , Clarke murmurs as she digs hurriedly inside her kit to find a bandage to stop the bleeding. When the bandage is finally in her hand, a Stalker howls and charges at the doctor, but Octavia is speedy enough with her Javelin gun to incapacitate it. 

“Nice shot, Octavia from farm station,” Indra congratulates Octavia, despite being in so much pain. 

Raven activates her ripper blades and shoots out time-dilating rays at a few Stalkers, hence sawing these monsters in half before they even have the time to hurt anyone again. The six other guards seem to be doing just fine, utilising their stasis and firing at the monsters incessantly. 

“We need to get her to the medical are!” Clarke worries. “I need to stitch her!” 

“I saw a small map earlier! Medical is on the third level! The elevator is over there,” a guard points at the dim light at the end of the physical training room. 

Clarke and another guard help Indra to her feet, whilst Octavia and Raven get rid of the enemies ahead of them. One guard precipitates towards the elevator's doors and presses the button. After just ten seconds, the doors open and the squad assists one another in helping Indra and pushing away Necromorphs. 

The elevator moves the group upward as the doors slide open, letting them see numerous counters and hanging pans and pots and a few ovens. The smell of vomit now zigzags through their helmet, inspiring them an urgent desire to throw up. The floor is sticky with dead tissue as the group plod with so much difficult through the big kitchen. When they catch a glimpse of the elevator leading to the highest level of the shuttle, a guard hastily makes his way to the elevator to call it, yet a giant tentacle snatches his body and squeezes his spine shattered. 

“What the fuck?!” Raven screams in horror. 

The Necromorph is fixed to the wall right next to the elevator; it has long and giant tentacles sprouting from its open stomach. It looks like it used to be a human, judging from its face; however, the humanoid face lets out a desperate moan as its torn-apart belly contracts and spits out small, sacky pods with long tentacles connected to them. These pods wave and puke out acid at the squad, thus blocking their way to their desired destination. The rest of the group hides behind a counter, whilst three guards open fire determinedly at the Guardian, only leading it to spit out more pods to catapult acid balls. A few pods manage to burn a guard's arms and face by throwing acid on him, as the group watches the guard die from acid burns. 

“Your armour is fucking useless!” Raven looks at Indra contemptuously. 

“They–they're just...pawns,” she replies hurtfully. 

“We're all pawns if you understand the point of this mission,” Octavia corrects. 

“Stop it, all of you! There are a few gas tanks lying around at the corner over there! Stop arguing and start doing something!” Clarke squawks. 

Raven manipulates skilfully with kinesis to grip a gas tank from afar, and throws it at the middle of the hall leading to the elevator to destroy the pods. She then grabs the biggest tank to throw at the Guardian, engendering the creature to explode into pieces. A few seconds after the booming sound, she stands up cautiously to look over the hall to see any sign of danger. There is none. 

“Go! Go!” She orders. 

\- - - 

Lexa learns briskly how to operate the navigation system. She verifies the status of doors and elevators throughout the ship to find the safest and fastest ways to reunite with the rest of the group. The main entrance and the control room are shown to be sealed shut, possibly by the dead tissue which spreads rapidly and blocks every exit, thus encircling living organisms to absorb them. There is no way out from where they entered, so the only option is to wander around the shuttle to discover secret passages. The navigation monitor displays a hidden exit pod above the library on the third level of the ship, as well as an emergency exit located right below the cockpit. 

The elevator in the engineers' room transporting upstairs is covered in dead tissue, as what seems to be an immature Guardian is attached to the dead tissue on the wall, with its tummy burst open. Lexa is powerless to counter the spread of the Corruption, and decides to open the door to the engine room which will guide her to reach the library faster. 

But, for now, her priority consists in re-establishing communication with her squad to inform them of the potential exits. And overcoming the throbbing in her head.

\- - - 

Lexa glides the engine room's door open as she spots a boy crying at a corner. The room is hot and filled with hanging metal bridges. _Why is a boy inside this place?_

The engineer squats next to the sobbing boy. “Hey! Why are you crying? Why are you here alone?”

The boy keeps burying his face in his knees and sobs. 

Receiving no answer, the engineer helps the boy stand up and looks at his face. “It's okay. You're safe now,” she wipes the tears on his cheeks. “My name is Lexa. What's your name?” 

“Aden,” the boy answers, huffing. 

Lexa holds his hands warmly. “It's okay, Aden. I'm here,” she wraps the boy around her arms to console him. “Have you seen any other survivors on this ship?”

Aden shakes his head in Lexa's embrace. The engineer can feel the boy's blond and sweaty hair brushing against her shoulder. 

“Let's go, Aden. We have to escape this place,” she takes his hand and guides him through the engine room. 

The boy just nods obediently and follows the stranger. 

Lexa's holographic communication monitor suddenly pops up and shows the image of Raven.

“Pride and Prejudice! You're still alive!” Raven say euphorically. 

“Raven! How is Clarke? How is everyone? Are you hurt? Where are you? How did you manage to contact me? I've tried in vain to contact all of you!” Lexa can feel the accelerated beating of her heart. 

“Clarke's alright. She's patching up Indra. Octavia's in good shape. We're in medical, but we have to move soon. I figured out a way to unjam the communication lines with a hacking panel here. Oh, we saw a broken cryotube in this room. Something might have escaped.”

“Any graver casualty?”

“All of the guards are dead, or turned into monsters. Only three guards left. Looks like Jaha's forces have the fighting skills of a banana peel...” 

Lexa laughs. “Alright, listen to me carefully. I found a navigation system in the engineers' room. Apparently, there's an emergency exit underneath the cockpit, which is the closest to where you guys are now. All other exit doors and elevators are clogged by that sticky substance on the floor and wall that smells like puke. You have to take the elevator down to the common room and get to the cockpit which will be on your right. There has to be an emergency exit through which you must crawl to reach an escape pod.”

“Roger it, Lex! But... How about you?” 

“I have to travel upward. I'm stuck in the engine room, and the only and closest exit is in the library. I'll have to space-walk back to the engineers' room, I guess...” 

“Be careful, Lexa. We expect to see you get out of this shit place alive.”

“Please take care of Clarke. If you won't be able to reach me again... Please...,” the engineer hesitates. “Please tell her... I lo–” 

Lexa's last sentence fails to reach the mechanic as her communication is disrupted by a loud banging sound on the other side of the engine room. Realising that she has little time to flee, she calls the elevator immediately to reach the storage room, where she will take another elevator to the library. She doesn't forget about Aden and takes his hand to run into the elevator. 

“Lexa. You'll have to finish the job,” Aden turns to the engineer and says blankly. 

Still holding the boy's palm, she lets it go at the mention of “finish the job”. “What?” She asks in disbelief. 

“ _Make us whole again_ ,” the boy replies. As soon as he finishes his sentence, Lexa witnesses his transformation into a pale, naked, tween-aged monster with long and thin claws on his fingers, and attempts to scratch Lexa's arm violently. “Aden” lets out high-pitched shrieks as though he is signaling for others to come and attack the engineer inside the elevator. 

As a natural drive towards self-defense, Lexa kicks the child monster into the face and kills it with just one strike. But as soon as the elevator's doors slide open, the same kind of monsters appears at the doors again, this time, they come in pack. Facing a herd of child monsters, the engineer takes out her Rivet gun and shoots at the hungry beasts with both her Cutter and Rivet gun, resulting in a mass killing of the mutated children. 

And she wonders what is happening to her senses, too. And why she is seeing all these things, at once. 

The engineer makes her way to the storage room, but a giant cooling fan at the end of the room impedes her steps, due to proximity to the engine right behind the fan. Luckily, her magnetic boots prevent her from being sucked through the fan and torn apart. There is nothing inside this room, except blood trails and a few gigantic containers movable with kinetic manipulation. 

A beefy creature crashes down through a broken vent in front of Lexa, when the engineer is struggling through the speed of wind produced by the humongous fan. The monster is tall, muscled, and covered in blood, as its big, slashy arms hang rigidly in front of its body in an intimidating posture. Although its speed is not something Lexa should be worried about, the damage dealt by its arms and strength is lethal. 

Lexa points her Rivet gun at the lower torso of the creature, firing a few shots to dismember its lower limbs. Even without its legs, its giant arms help it crawl towards the engineer, even though its speed is not comparable to that of the Slashers or Lurkers. She then switches to her Cutter and cut off its slashy arms, seeming to disable it for a few seconds.

But, the creature keeps writhing as it appears to be _regrowing its limbs._ And its growl sounds deeper than the other ones'; its growl sounds more threatening, more monstrous. 

_What the fishballs! This one is regenerating?!_

The engineer is aware that she can run fast, yet not fast enough to reach the elevator when mountains of containers are blocking the way to her sole means of transportation. 

_How in the Universe am I going to make this thing disappear?_

Remembering that she is still in possession of stasis and kinesis, the engineer begins throwing containers at the Regenerator's lower torso, thus succeeding in temporarily dismembering its legs. It keeps leaping effortlessly at her, though. She reacts quickly enough to shoot stasis at the monster to slow it down, and buys her a few seconds to run towards the direction of the colossal engine-cooler.

“Come at me! Come on, get closer!” She provokes. 

The Regenerator walks slowly into Lexa's direction, yet as soon as it gets back on its feet again, Lexa manages to toss a few other containers to break its legs and push it closer to the slicing fan. 

Its lower limbs are sprouting again, and the engineer is struggling to stand firmly onto the metal floor. This is probably the first time that she whispers “Thanks, Jaha” for having assigned her a pair of magnetic boots to prevent her from transforming into chopped meat. 

This time, when the monster is the closest to the fan, she shoots a container at its head, knocking it off of his feet, as the massive cooler sucks it into the firing engine, thus incinerating the creature in the process. 

“Now you can cool down in eternal hell fires,” she jokes before heading to the library. 

\- - -

_This is medical officer Amanda Jones reporting. Test subject number zero nineteen has been inside the cryotube for twenty-three days. No sign of weakness at all, as his upper limbs grow steadily as projected. Necrotic tissue shows no sign of damage. Ready to be deployed in fourteen days._

_Cloning test subjects number one fifty-one to one eighty-five. A few signs of unimportant defects, but they are desired. No detected mutations of the Necrotic tissue. Ready to blossom in nine days._

_The gates to the City of Light have been opened, thanks to science. Our means must justify our science._

On their way to the common room, Clarke replays the audio log in loops which she collected in medical. She wonders what type of sick bastards could have turned ordinary, innocent human beings into monstrous killing machines by just experimenting on them without their consent. 

She also understands what the Church has been implying all these years about the _City of Light_ and the _Afterlife_ : transcending human mortality through the transformation into Necromorphs, to access whatever is left of the _Afterlife_. 

_Unitologists are utterly insane_. And this what her father had warned her prior to his floating. _Don't Make Us Whole Again_ , in contrast to their nonsensical mantra: _Make Us Whole Again_. 

_Dismember them is the only way to stop them, temporarily._

Clarke finally grasps his father's final message. He wanted Clarke to stop the infestation, the transformation; he wanted her to seal the gates shut to whatever stage in human evolution which Unitologists had been proudly venerating: the _City of Light_. 

_But there is no light in the City of Light. There are only monsters and bloodshed. The dead might be gone, but they always come back hungry for blood._

She finally understands the real purposes of this suicide mission: Jaha wanted them to bring the specimen back onto the Ark and unleash an outbreak, which would eventually open the doors to the _City of Light_. 

She start worrying that Unitologists may begin tricking innocent people into thinking that mass suicide and voluntary sacrifice are the only ways for them to attain absolute salvation and the key to the _Afterlife_ , the sole ways to _Make Us Whole Again_. 

What if the people whom she cherishes are coerced into committing suicide? Like her mother who has formed a resistance movement to the Church's unethical teachings and falseness? Like...

 _Lexa_. 

The more Clarke cogitates, the more she agonises over the thought of Lexa being brainwashed by Titus and Gustus into terminating her own life, for the sake of obtaining salvation, or whatever bullshit they have pumped into her head after all those years without her real family. Or worse, they may attempt to torture her to death, even assassinate her directly.

 _But humans have free will_. 

Free will is what Clarke will use to prevent the worst-case scenario to happen to the people whom she loves. 

\- - - 

As soon as the elevator's doors open, Clarke points her Cutter at the herd of Necromorphs inside the common room and fires aggressively at them. She clenches her jaw and glares at the monsters; each of her shot is achieved with great accuracy and determination. 

One Spitter dodges the fire and charges at her. But the doctor shoots its legs apart and starts stomping the beast non-stop as she mouths some profanities. The entire room has the atmosphere of a festival of blood as dead Necromorphs resemble blood-tainted mashed potatoes on the floor. 

“Holy molly Griffin...,” Raven makes a remark. “Your superhero complex is back?” 

“I just want to find Lexa and get the hell out of this place,” Clarke replies as she precipitates to the cockpit. 

Noticing that Clarke is moving faster than the rest of the squad, especially with an injured Indra struggling to walk straight, the mechanic advises the doctor to slow down and stick with the group for communal protection. 

“She told me to take care of you, Clarke. I think she wanted to tell you she loved you. Our signals were interrupted before she even had the time to say it...” 

Clarke stands frozen as she faces the empty cockpit. She looks down at the floor and turns around to answer Raven. “Then we'll have to find her. She's out there alone.” 

“No, Clarke. We're really close to the emergency exit, just underneath the cockpit. Lexa is taking an alternative exit on the third level...” 

Offended by Raven's words which are not intended to be hurtful, Clarke advances towards the mechanic and nabs her shoulders. “Why didn't you tell me this? Why didn't you tell me this earlier? Why did you contact her and leave her out there alone on this fucking doomed ship? Are you secretly with the Church? Tell me! Tell me! Spit out the truth!” The doctor shakes the mechanic. 

“Lexa's the one with a navigation system and she gave us the safest way to get out of here. The infestation spreads quickly with sticky dead tissue and that _thing_ is blocking our ways out. I'm as hostile to the Church as you are, Clarke. They did unforgivable things to my parents on Aegis VII. At the time they took me away from their custody, I was already mature and wise enough to discern lies from truth,” she pauses as though there is a lump in her throat. “Besides, do you trust Lexa's capacity to stay alive? She is strong and intelligent, Clarke. We'll reunite with her on the Ark.” 

With her hands still gripping Raven's shoulders, Clarke's tears start oozing out from the corner of her eyes, even though no one can see it with her helmet sealed shut. She shakes her head regretfully, although an expression of disbelief, even despair, can be detected. 

“I trust her, Raven. I do,” the doctor pauses as she huffs. “And I love her, too.” 

“Then we need to get back,” Indra interrupts the conversation as Octavia and the last elite guard carries her. 

Clarke nods and leads the way to make sure that the cockpit is safe enough for the survivors to get to its lower level, where the emergency exit is understood to be accessed. Raven helps the doctor lift up the hatch to the emergency exit, and as soon as it's upheaved, the doctor prudently points her flashlight to scan fo potential danger, yet there appears to be none. When she declares the area to be clear, she begins to climb down the ladder and lands on the exit platform. Raven follows, whilst Indra struggle to descend with her injury still present. Octavia climbs down before the last elite guard. 

However, the squad lands onto the escape platform just to discover that there is no escape pod at all inside the empty hangar. 

“No! No! No!” Clarke yells. “This can't be happening!” 

Raven runs to the transparent glass separating them from the void and presses her hands on the surface. “This can be broken with explosives!” 

Octavia looks sceptically at the mechanic. “How do you know? We don't even have any explosive here!” 

Some guttural sounds smash the vent into shattered pieces. New creatures move heavily towards the squad; they have deformed, even melted, faces and bear a heavy, glowing yellow sack attached to their right arm which seems to be infected. Raven then runs back to where the group is standing and orders others to shoot at that thing. “Make them go boom! Now!” 

Clarke presses the trigger of her Cutter and succeeds in slicing off their arms and heads, whereas Octavia and the guard manage to shoot down a few other Exploders as they trudge through the hail of bullets. At the moment Octavia's javelin hits one of the yellow sacks, the strike triggers a series of explosions, on account of the pile of detached sacks which serve as substitutes for explosives. The multiple explosions shatter the glass and create a vacuum at the escape platform, forcing the squad to activate their shoulder thrusters to move back to the Ark. 

The nearest room that the squad can reach without worrying about limited oxygen is the mechanics' room, to which Raven knows the passcode by heart. The five-people army float their way to their destination's airlocks, just to face another “Locked” sign again. 

_This is not a good sign_ , Clarke mumbles.

Raven floats next to the airlocks to rip the hacking panel apart. Simply after a few twists and turns, the airlocks open, as the rest of the team looks at the mechanic with great amazement. 

Apparently, the mechanic's reputation as the girl-who-can-make-things-go-boom is better known than her side profession as a hacker. 

They are safe. For now. 

\- - - 

Lexa is trying to come to terms with the short-lived existence of “Aden” as she wanders around the labyrinthine library. But, in all of a sudden, she hears an explosion noise from afar as her navigation system indicates, through a series of beeping sound, that a vacuum at the emergency platform has just been created, hence draining breathable air on the wrecked shuttle. The engineer's suit displays ten minutes of oxygen available. As a default setting, once a vacuum is formed on a shuttle, gravity is automatically disabled. The engineer now floats with her shoulder and ankle thrusters, and scans the ceiling for an exit sign with her Cutter's light. 

Trouble becomes doubled when Lexa discovers the existence of a dozen of stationary Necromorphs which appear to be the results of the proliferation _en masse_ of Necrotic tissue to absorb other life forms. They resemble massive snails that don't really crawl and have the shape of giant globules. The nearer the engineer floats to them, the faster the globules contract to eject yellow sacks that explode, once they are unleashed by the immobile snails' three long tongues. 

Without gravity, these stationary creatures can cough out their bombs to float in the void, which means that if Lexa touches the yellow sacks, she will turn into ashes... For now, she can count up to seven Cysts, and most of them locate strategically close to the secret emergency exit sealed by a metal panel, graspable from a distance using kinesis. 

But the engineer has to get rid of these hideous snails first.

She hovers close enough to the creatures for them to bark out their sacky bombs to float in zero-G environment, and begins to grab the sacks with her kinesis to make these monsters get a taste of their own medicine. 

These things blow up one by one, clearing the way for Lexa to tear apart the metal panel and open the secret exit. Her suit specifies two minutes left of viable oxygen, which is enough for her to make her way back to the Ark through the mechanics' room, where the team must be staying right now. 

She proceeds through the square hole and doesn't even look back at the horrors which she has just witnessed.


	5. Can't Catch A Breath.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because Jaha likes to fuck things up and the squad has to exhale in relief a lot.

When the team's feet touch the floor in the stabilising room, waves of oxygen are blown upon them to restore breathable air to the room. Each of them lets out an exhale of relief as their helmet glides open. Raven opens the second airlock as the group makes their way into the mechanics' room. But the sliding door leading to other parts of the Mother Station displays another “Locked” sign, again. 

The mechanic warns the rest of the team that the door is not supposed to be sealed, unless an emergency has been declared station-wise. But anyway, each of them crumples onto a chair, still endeavouring to digest what has just happened to them on the doomed shuttle.

Clarke asks Octavia whether she had the time to collect specimen's samples which Jaha had ordered her to do, to which the agricultural specialist replies with a nod. But Clarke, clearly understanding the real purpose of the suicide mission, tells Octavia to incinerate the specimen, in fear of Jaha's madness to recreate the monsters. She even elaborates on the real meaning of _Make Us Whole Again_ , and what the _City of Light_ consists of, now with all the puzzle pieces in her hands.

Meanwhile, the mechanic strives to overturn another communication jam to connect with Lexa on her computer. The engineer should be back at any moment, yet a pop-up always seems more ensuring to see her face again. 

Indra is still recovering from her wound. It has stopped bleeding, but the bandage is soaked with red and needs to be changed. Without access to the medical wing, Clarke is useless, despite her expertise, for she needs more supplies to patch up the Commander again. The last standing elite guard named Carlton seeks to communicate with his teammates, particularly Lincoln, but to no avail. His face shows a slight expression of scepticism to the suicide mission from which he has miraculously escaped. He is probably questioning the Church, too. 

In all of a sudden, the first airlock is opened. The gliding sound startles the entire squad, but when Raven glances at the surveillance monitor, it turns out to be...

“Lexa!” Clarke exclaims joyfully. 

“Told you she would make it,” Raven smiles. 

But as soon as the second airlock is unsealed, the engineer enters the room and collapses onto the floor. Clarke arrives just in time to catch her fatigued pal from hitting her head against the hard metal surface. She calls the engineer's name to see if she is alright. 

There is blood all over Lexa's engineer suit, but her insides don't seem to be affected. The first thing that Lexa blurts out is the doctor's name. It appears that she almost ran out of oxygen, again. 

“Lexa! Lexa! Can you hear me? Damn it you almost died from oxygen deprivation again!” Clarke brushes the engineer's hair out of her face as she holds Lexa's head in her arms. 

Puffing, Lexa still manages a bad pick-up line. “You took my breath away, Clarke...” 

“You're an idiot,” the doctor answers as she buries her face in Lexa's hair, shedding a few tears. “Your forehead is burning.”

“My headache is still here... But I can stand up. I have a lot you tell you guys.”

\- - - 

The engineer stands up weakly with the help of her doctor pal as she places her palm on her forehead. Clarke searches her medical kit to see if there are any painkillers lying around, but Lexa tells her that these won't work. The truth is that, they haven't worked at all since last year, when her migraines and visions first emerged onto the surface. 

Clarke asks the engineer again about when specifically her hallucinations first appeared, to which Lexa replied in September, when Costia had come back to the Ark on her biannual visit, precisely on the second of the month. It is no coincidence that Costia also gave Lexa the pendant on that day as a gift. In her hallucinations, Lexa started hearing her family talk to her in her sleep. She has experienced insomnia since. Her condition aggravated as she heard her family and Costia speak to her in her conscious state, and auditory hallucinations soon progressed to visual ones as she saw Jake whilst working right outside the Ark.

Lexa describes her encounter with a boy called “Aden” on the wrecked shuttle. She wanted to get out of there and be one of the good guys, yet, somehow, in some ways, “Aden” wasn't really “Aden”. He transformed immediately into a gray, naked child monster as he mumbled “Make Us Whole Again” to the engineer and ordered her to “finish the job”, forcing her to kick his brain mashed onto the elevator's floor. 

The engineer continues her account; when she was space-walking back to the Ark from a secret emergency exit on the doomed ship, she spotted gunfire in several halls throughout the Mother Station's, meaning that something strange is going on. A few empty cages hanging loosely over the side of the floating station had been broken apart. Perhaps, Jaha has secretly been bringing those monsters onto the Ark to wipe out all of them. _All of us_.

“Hold on. What exactly is inside the pendant?” The doctor asks, ignoring the alleged chaos on the Mother Station. 

“I don't know. Costia didn't tell me anything and just put it around my neck,” the engineer shrugs. 

“Take it out. We need to take a look inside.” 

Lexa removes the pendant's clips and hands it to her doctor friend. Clarke opens the pendant to discover that...

“There's a piece of the artifact inside!” Clarke fetches out the piece of red rock and raises it close to the light. “In my dad's journal, he reported people experiencing headaches and visions when exposed to the Marker for too long. Now we know why you've been suffering.” 

Lexa and the others gaze at the red rock with great astonishment. This is the first time in her life that she sees the artifact in its concrete form, and not in some bullshit fairy tales about the _City of Light_. Suddenly, alien messages and scriptures pop out to the side of the red rock in the engineer's visual field; she blinks repeatedly to make sure that this is not another hallucination, yet, now, the coded messages are levitating in circles around the small piece of artifact. 

A sharp pain traverses her temples as she shrieks painfully. “My vision...,” she squeezes her eyes shut. “My vision can render through the rock's secret message!” The engineer collapses her head into her sweaty palms. 

“What? What do you see?” Raven inquires. 

“Some coded messages in an alien language. It tells me to activate another artifact to _make us whole again_. I don't even understand what the phrase means!”

Clarke, still holding the piece of rock between her thumb and index fingers, puts it down on the table and instructs Raven to give her a hammer. She wants to destroy this tiny piece of rock which has been causing so much misery to Lexa. 

The mechanic opens her tool lock and takes out a small hammer, powerful enough to smash the artifact into ashes. The doctor holds the hammer's handle firmly and smashes the rock into tiny pieces without reluctance, just to find a small flash drive concealed inside. She takes the flash drive out from the rock's cinders and gives it to Lexa, concluding that maybe this was what Costia had always wished for them to see. Clarke then pushes the rock's tiny pieces in a small jar and pours the ashes inside the incinerating cubicle, where Octavia has just finished destroying the specimen's samples, to annihilate what is understood to be the last source of Lexa's migraines. 

\- - - 

The first video log shows a distraught Costia attempting to hold her camera firmly and speaking anxiously. On the bottom left corner of the video frame lays out the date of the recording: 06th of August, 2519. 

_“Lexa, I hope you can see this in the near future. I'm trying my best to show the Church has been lying to us all this time. Filming with this hidden camera is a huge risk to my career and my life, but someone has to stand up and expose these unethical actions in the darkness. Polaris may bear the reputation of a lab, but it's not like any other labs you could imagine! It's grotesque, it's morbid. They're experimenting on actual living humans here! You might have heard of Wells Jaha, son of the Chancellor. But on Polaris, this is how Wells has become.”_

_The door to the “Culture Preservation” room glides open. Costia, with the hidden camera probably on her chest, moves closer to a massive cryotube containing green liquid and what is understood to be the Chancellor's son. Two tubes are connected to his forearms, whereas two other tubes are attached to his thighs. A small piece of what is spotted to be the Red Marker is placed beside the cryotube._

_“Can you check if his brain activity is stable?” A woman in a white coat asks Costia. She measures around 158cm, has black hair, and her badge shows the name “Becca”._

_“Sure, Madam,” Costia agrees as she types something onto the computer. On the left side of the screen, a line graph pops up, showing the consistency in the length of Wells' brainwave, whilst on the right side, a time-lapse video showing his brain activity during the past six hours gives Costia enough information to report back to Becca._

_“Day five. No change in the brain activity of the test subject,” Costia informs her superior._

_“Any neural response?”_

_Costia opens some new graphs. “None, Madam.”_

_“And the size of his arms? Legs?”_

_“Slight growth of the thighs and forearms, Madam.”_

_Suddenly, the camera seems to be taken out of Costia's chest pocket and trembles. It's making strange noise, as though it's being used to write down something. However, in the frame, the image shows a focused Becca trying to manipulate with her test tubes and microscope. When the scribbling sound disappears, the angle returns to where it was initially placed. Costia now turns to Becca._

_“Is there anything I can do, Madam?” Costia asks._

_“No. You can return to your lab,” Becca says blankly and doesn't even look at Costia._

_“Yes Madam.”_

_The camera now follows Costia to the corridor. It takes the neurobiologist ten minutes to reach a chamber called “Cell Formation Chamber, Professor Costia Jasmin”. As soon as she enters the chamber, she activates the password to seal the door locked. Then, she proceeds to stand on a stool and disables the surveillance camera. She sits at her computer desk to give the impression that she is working._

_“Alright. I know it looks weird, but I uploaded a software to manipulate with the surveillance camera in this room. I just shut it down, but my software tricks the camera into thinking it's watching me. It's complicated and I don't have enough time to explain._

_“Lexa, I don't know where to start this. I didn't ask for anything of this. But I decided I had enough because of unethical actions. So... Uh... I had decided to join Polaris in April because I was excited to have a new lab and do good things and embrace the science. I wanted to do the science, you know?_

_“At the start of my job, Becca assigned me a few tasks, like cultivating certain cells I didn't know. No one told me what those cells were, not even Becca. The cells looked really dead! Becca told me to put these cells and healthy, living cells together, but I quickly noticed a mass proliferation of dead cells to absorb living organisms and cause mutation. The Necrotic tissue became multi-layered soon after, but this kind of tissue only contained dead cells, so how could they take over living cells?_

_“If I remember correctly, Wells Jaha was sent to Polaris in June, secretly. People thought he was sent here to lead the station, but it was just another lie the Church wanted us to believe. Wells was actually Becca's test subject, on his father's order, to pursue some form of scientific hubris. I don't even know what their goal is._

_“Wells was euthanised shortly in July. He had been tricked into thinking he was carrier of some terminal disease since he was a kid. But his body is still kept 'alive' inside this green liquid, to keep his tissues alive. But how can you keep dead tissues alive? Activate the Necrotic one. How? With a special virus I helped create._

_Costia's face collapses into her palms as her camera is squeezed into her left arm. Her voice sounds unclear as a result. “I–I... I know. It was wrong, but I didn't know what I was doing. I was blinded by the science. Their version of science. The cells they asked to grow and proliferate, those came from the blood of a dead man, reportedly infected by what they called an 'Infector', a butterfly-looking creature that can crawl and bring the dead back to life using its long nails. They call the creature the 'Guardian of the Gates to the City of Light', due to its ability to bring the dead back alive. Depends on your definition of 'alive', though..._

_“The infected man came back to life just twenty minutes after, with an urgent desire to kill anything he saw. He had mutated, sword-like arms that can slice anything apart. He ran fast and was very agile. Deformed face, rotten skeleton, melted skin, decomposed organs, fallen ribcage. He smelled like vomit. They kept him 'alive' to study him, and found out the brain was slightly affected, even though the infection targeted the brain first. But the tissue around his forearms and legs thickened. The Necrotic tissue._

_“Eventually, the infected man killed two security guards. He died from incineration just two hours later. Honestly, I don't know if I should call that thing a man... There was no humanity in that thing, but Unitologists announced the next step to human evolution had just arrived. I was horrified by these experiments on humans in the shadow, but they forced me to inject Wells with the extracted virus from the infected creature's blood, developed by Becca._

_“Before the incident and the injection, I had thought I was doing my duty. I had thought I was doing everything I loved. I went here for the science, but I didn't want to stay for the lack of ethics. I'm now stuck here and I can't go back, Lexa... Every day I wish I knew about these things earlier. Every day I wish I could return to you and live our normal life again. We would be growing a small garden together and have baby sunflowers and tomatoes and all... I would be waking up to the sound of your coming back to our apartment with those dirty black lines on your face and I would be laughing at you and pinching your face... But why did I choose this? Why did I choose status and prestige over you, the only person who matters to me right now?_

_“I'm sorry, love. I think I just committed a crime against humanity. I contributed to the destruction of our race by blindly following science. The Church. That's why I'm exposing them through these video logs. I think they will reach you, very soon._

_“Before I sign off, Becca had also created a Red Marker, a man-made holy artifact that the Church worship, if you remember their teachings. The Marker is now stored on Polaris, inside a special room to prevent it from broadcasting pulses and signals to trigger the access to the City of Light. The Church has been saying the people are not ready yet, since it's still in experimental phases. Recently, two technicians working inside the preservation room slit their throat for no reason... It was frightening. But a lot of those who frequented the room to change the temperature or collect data reported experiencing headache, insomnia, paranoia, even hallucinations of their dead loved ones. A technician almost hung herself a few days ago, only to be rescued by her partner._

_“I don't know what's happening, Lexa. Yesterday, I heard my parents talk to me in my sleep. Their voices sounded so...real. I miss them so much... I miss you. I just want to go b–”_

The camera suddenly makes a static turn-off sound. The first video log seems to end here, or a technical error might have occurred. 

\- - - 

_Costia is now standing next to the cryotube to watch Becca pump a syringe into the tubes connected to Wells' limbs._

_“Day ten since the injection of the virus. I'm adding a performance booster to increase the size of his arms and legs, and slow down the spread of the virus throughout his entire body. This way, we'll have more time to study the effects of the virus on abnormal limb size,” Becca explains as she introduces the serum into Wells._

_Costia scribbles on the report. “But... Madam... How can one function without any detected heart rate?”_

_Becca has just pulled out the syringe and turns around to answer. “The virus affects the nervous system enough to resuscitate the subject, but the majority of the Necrotic tissue thickens around the limbs. Which is a breakthrough for us! When the test subject is ready to be deployed, we'll distribute the serum for civilian purpose.”_

\- - - 

_Costia is seen advancing towards an area on Polaris named “Pulse and Signal Container”. The date indicates 16th of August, 2519._

_“We need to perform a weekly check-up on the Artifact to see if there is any pulse or signal leak. This must be kept confidential until the Chancellor orders us to unleash the signals,” Becca leads the way and speaks to Costia._

_“I remember, Madam,” Costia replies obediently._

_Becca slides her access card across a slot and clicks on the number pad to open the container. The first thing that strikes the spectator's view is a giant red structure resembling the DNA's double helix. The double helix converges upwards to form two sharp points. The structure is glowing red as though it's attempting to emit signals._

_“The Marker is sending me coded messages. It wants me to release it. But I can't,” Becca claims._

_“Why?” Costia inquires._

_“It wants to Make Us Whole Again. It wants me to open the doors to the City of Light to all of us,” Becca smirks proudly._

_In all of a sudden, Costia lets out a whimpering sound. She crouches and places both of her palms on her head painfully._

_“It's happening again, Madam. The headache.”_

_“It's working,” the Marker's creator mutters._

_“Pardon?” Costia gazes up at her superior._

_“Nothing,” Becca shakes her head slightly and smiles at the woman in pain. “You should rest, Costia.”_

_Costia exits the container, beleaguered by the pain that shoots through her temples. Out of nowhere, she exclaims in full surprise at the corridor, even though the camera doesn't detect any human presence._

_“Dad? Mom?”_

\- - - 

_“Day 23 since Wells' first contact with the virus. Today is the twenty-fourth of August. His limbs have grown thrice their usual size. Vivid brain activity recorded, although no sign of cardiac pulse,” Costia informs Becca._

_Becca strokes her chin pensively as she gazes at the creature with great pride. “Good. Very good. Let's go back to the Marker.”_

_The two women make their way to the container, yet Costia keeps turning around warily, as though she is expecting someone to follow her or call her name. The passageway is deserted without any human silhouette, however._

_When the container's door opens, two technicians are spotted standing in front of the red artifact. They appear to gaze at it with veneration, whilst they mouth some bizarre phrases in an unrecognisable language; however, when Costia approaches them, they each hold a knife in their hand and immediately slit their throat, letting blood spurt out uncontrollable as their jugular veins are sliced open._

_“What the hell?” Costia makes a few steps back, horrified. “Madam! Madam!”_

_The camera now follows Becca. Costia's superior looks at the cadavers, smirking. She then proceeds to command four guards to take the dead corpses into Polaris's morgue._

\- - - 

_The date is the 29th of August, 2519._

_Costia arrives to the Marker-containing room just to cover her mouth in shock at a bone-chilling scene._

_A Slasher has just woken up from a dead man's body. Or the man became the Slasher, after having been infected by the Necromorph virus or possibly an Infector._

_The dead man is Kieran. Or maybe was. Kieran used to be himself, but now, he is a monster. No one knows why his body lay unresponsive next to the control panel of the container. And no one seems concerned, either._

_The creature stands up with difficulty, using its upper slashy limbs. Yet, once it's firm on its feet, it precipitates to where Costia is staying, ready to chop her into pieces._

_The neurobiologists covers her face with her arms in self-defense, but the Slasher lets out a shriek as it collapses onto the floor, as soon as the buzzing sound of a fired Line Gun cut its upper limbs apart._

_Costia uncovers her face and turns around to see who has just fired the weapon._

_The camera points at Becca, laughing maniacally at the defeated monster as she throws the weapon on the floor._

_“So the result has been achieved. I just have to remove the signal-blocking barriers for all of us,” Becca says prophetically._

_“I'll go back to the Ark. I'm done,” Costia runs away._

\- - - 

At the moment when the group is watching Costia's exit, Lexa runs to the sink and throws up in disgust. Raven is just standing against her desk and close enough to the engineer to pat on her back. 

Before the squad has the time to finish all the logs, the computer is shut down from the outside system. Instead of being actually shut down, the monitor displays a looped broadcast message from Jaha to the entire Mother Station. 

“Attention, Arkers. This is your Chancellor speaking. I am very happy to announce the path to the City of Light has been laid out by your fellow specialists. The next step to human evolution is here. Should you join us at the Church by ten o'clock this evening, the gift from the Holy Artifact will be granted to you. The Afterlife awaits, and the City of Light will be ours. Come and join us. Bring your family, bring your friends, invite others to join. You will obtain salvation and clemency for all your sins.” 

“Can you turn it off?” Clarke asks Raven as she hands Lexa a cup of water. 

The mechanic nods and plugs off her computer. Lexa sits down with her back against the tool locker to drink her water, but her face shows a shocked expression as she recovers from her dead lover's secret videotapes. She seems like she just wishes to be left alone for a while. 

Clarke takes a seat on a stool, exhaling heavily. But Octavia reaches out to her, placing a hand on the doctor's shoulder. “I'm sorry about Wells. I know you used to be very good friends. I saw you guys playing chess together sometimes in common school. He seemed like a good person,” she pauses. “I'm sorry I hated him because he was Jaha's son...” 

Clarke looks at Octavia guiltily. “He was nothing like his father. He was not a fanatic. He was just studying to become a teacher...,” she stops and looks up at the ceiling. “Why does Jaha take away _everyone_ I care about?” She glances at the engineer as she ends her sentence. The engineer is still sitting on the floor, her knees are up close to her chest and her arms wrap around them. She is staring into the empty space in front of her, her fingers caressing what remains of her dead lover, as tears roll down her cheeks. 

Outside of of the mechanics' room, gunshots can be heard multiple times from the main hall and in several passageways. The metal-covered floor vibrates as people rush through the corridors and run, as though they are being chased. Screams echo back to where the team is staying, as guards order everyone to head to the Church. 

“Did you turn off the surveillance camera in this room?” Indra murmurs to Raven.

The mechanic just nods as a quick answer. Indra orders her last elite guard not to join the chasing party, until the group knows exactly what is happening on the other side of the metal wall. 

The squad can hear other people's voices speaking to themselves, alone, outside the mechanics' room. At one moment, they can even hear someone slit their own throat as a knife or scalpel falls down onto the floor. The person who has just committed suicide collapses onto the floor, drawing their last breath and writhing on the floor probably flooded with blood. 

And they hear growling noise. Animal-like. _Again_.

When the echo of the growl terminates. Lexa's condition deteriorates as she falls onto the floor, again, holding her head in pain. Clarke crouches quickly to shush the engineer and strokes her head to relieve the pain. 

“I–I can...hear everything, Clarke,” the engineer whimpers. “The voices...are back again...” 

“We have to get her to medical, and Indra,” the doctor turns around and announces to the team. “But... This is impossible. We destroyed the rock!” 

Raven, Octavia, Indra, and Carlton glance at each other and seem to agree just through their facial expression. 

“And there are weird things going on out there. I have to find Lincoln, too,” Octavia reminds everyone. 

“Can't catch a breath, can we?” Raven says.


	6. In Unity We Die.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mass suicide. Lexa goes nutsier. Facing two fanatics. How do they do it?

Once the rushing sound and screams no longer resonate in the hallway, Raven unlocks the door for the squad to go to the medical area. It is another _déjà vu_ ; dead corpses lying around in a bloodbath as their neck is cut open, whereas a few others are understood to have been shot by pulse rifles. It appears that some cadavers have been dragged away by someone, or some people, as trails of blood draw pathways on the floor. In addition to the smell of the metal space station, the metallic odour of blood combined makes the station smell almost rusted. Some tungsten lights have also been burst by pulse rounds, whilst some others are flashing unsteadily and making buzzing sound. 

Jaha's message is now diffused on the Ark's radio, in addition to it being on every monitor on the Mother Station. But as the team comes across any monitor or loudspeakers, Octavia just uses the Javelin gun to smash them into pieces as she mouths “Bullshit!” 

Indra can now walk on her own, although her stomach still hurts from the Stalker's attack. Carlton is just marching next to her with his head high as a sign of vigilance. Raven is leading the way with her new-found Plasma Cutter inside the tool locker, whilst Clarke is walking beside Lexa to check up on the engineer. It appears that her headache is still taunting her whilst she manages to stand straight and walk straight. 

It smells like death throughout the hallways. Maybe even throughout the station. A few vents have been hatched open. 

When the group reaches the main hall, there are white arrows painted on the floor and the walls, pointing at the direction of the Church. One person, at a corner, is smashing their head voluntarily against the wall repeatedly as blood gushes out from their temples and forehead, their mouth mumbling something like “I'm almost in the City of Light. I'm almost there.” At another corner, another person sits with their back against the wall, their mouth open as blood spurts out like a water fountain from their neck. Their left palm rests open on the floor with a blood-covered kitchen knife lying next to their hand. They choke on their last words, which appear to be the phrase “Make Us Whole Again” reiterated. Some other corpses lack a head, whilst some others have a bloody hole on their forehead. Some are sobbing, whilst some others are laughing hysterically, finding joy in mass suicide. 

Clarke seems to have embraced her powerlessness in the event of a mass suicide and Authority-led massacre. She walks past the corpses in disbelief, yet anger makes her blood boil as she realises that Jaha has been pushing innocent people to jump off the cliff against their free will. 

Lexa kneels on the floor from exhaustion and pain next to a corpse. Her arms support the upper parts of her body as her head leans close to the metal surface. She lets out a few puffs and clenches her jaw in a mental battle against her headache and auditory hallucinations. 

“Lexa, it's time to make us one again.” 

The voice startles Lexa as she looks to her left, where a decapitated cadaver is whispering to her. Despite the absence of the head, the engineer can see who it used to be as she pictures a womanly face smiling at her. 

“Come on, Lexa. Finish the job,” the dead corpse repeats. 

The engineer, frustrated by the visions, proceeds to strangle the corpse as she jumps onto the body and wraps her hands around the neck area, pressing tightly. “Stop talking to me! Stop!” She screams at the hollow face. 

“Lexa! What are you doing?” Clarke inches towards the engineer. “Stop! It's a dead body!”

The doctor tries to grab the engineer's out of the pathetic scene, only to receive an elbow in the nose, causing blood to stream down her nostrils. Octavia and Raven decide to intervene, each snatching Lexa's arms to drag her away from the corpse and point at the bleeding doctor. With Clarke on sight, Lexa calms down as she notices blood running down her friend's nostrils. She crouches towards her friend to ask if she is okay, just to receive Clarke's yell “I'm fine!” at her.

“What have I done?” The engineer sits down on the floor and tilts her head downwards. She glances at the beheaded corpse, and analyses her hands to acquiesce that she actually experienced a hallucination.

“I'm sorry, Clarke. I'm so sorry,” the engineer looks at her doctor pal, crying. 

The doctor is wiping the blood from her nose with a tissue. “It's fine. I'm lucky you didn't knock me unconscious.” 

“I don't know what to do with these things I hear and see, Clarke...”

“As long as I'm with you, don't believe in anything the voices and the dead tell you to. Don't listen to them. It's not you, Lexa. I know it. This is the Marker giving you orders. You must resist it. Now we have to get you and Indra to medical, find my mom, then destroy that shitty piece of rock.”

“I'm fine,” Indra retorts. 

The engineer gradually gets back on her feet. “Me too. I think I can control it.”

“You sure, Lex?” Raven looks at the engineer dubiously.

Lexa bobs her head as she closes her helmet, ready to deal with whatever lies ahead, albeit the throbbing in her temples is still tormenting her. 

\- - - 

Clarke opens the sliding doors to medical just to discover another bloodbath again. The last breathing patient is using a surgery saw to rip her head off on her bed. Several severed heads and limbs lie blooded on the white floor, whilst some cadavers are wrapped in white cloth from head to toe. On the preparation counter, a lot of scalpels and knives have gone missing as the tool containers are burst open. The lockers are also left open and empty, and the Plasma Cutters have been taken away, probably for mass suicide or self-defense. 

The doctor desperately calls for her mother inside the medical wing. She has travelled through the radiology area, operation room, and patients' zone, but, so far, no sign of Abby. This is rather strange of her mother, for in situations of life and death, she is so certain that her mother will be staying here, patching up the injured and saving those who are about to jump off the cliff, despite the rampant violence and mayhem throughout the Ark.

Exasperated, she thrusts everything on the preparation counter onto the floor and bursts into tears. 

Lexa opens her helmet and holds Clarke's hand. “We'll find her, Clarke. We always do.” 

“What if something happened to her, Lexa? What if she turned into one of those things?” 

When the doctor finishes speaking, her holographic communication monitor pops up, showing Abby being held at gunpoint by Gustus, as Titus addresses her. “Clarke Griffin, Abby's daughter, isn't it? Well well, you look exactly like each other,” Titus laughs, pointing out the obvious.

“What have you done to my mom? Why are you taking her hostage?” 

“We want your engineer friend, Clarke. Where is Lexa?” 

The doctor glances at Lexa, not wanting to reveal the engineer's presence. But Lexa's urge to reply to Titus's threat tosses Clarke's mental plan into the garbage. “I'm here, Titus. What do you want? Let Abby go!”

“Lexa, darling. I want you to come alone to the Church. It's time for unity, darling. Your friend must trade you for her mother,” Titus shuts down the monitor. 

When Titus cuts off communication, the engineer glides her helmet shut and heads to the exit doors. But Clarke follows her and nabs her arm, forcing Lexa to turn around. 

“I have to go, Clarke! They want me!” Lexa expresses annoyedly as she thrusts Clarke's hand aside. 

“This is a personal matter! They have my mother hostage!” 

“Why must you bring everything to yourself, Clarke? Did they not make it clear enough that they wanted me to come there alone? I want you to be safe with the rest of the group!” 

“No, Lexa! I want you to stop showing your hero complex! Stop acting like you can save everyone when those monsters are everywhere! What if they kill you and my mother? I can't lose you both!”

“You can't fix this, Clarke. They want me. They want me to die with them, not your mother.”

“Let me come with you! We can negotiate together!” 

“Can you fucking stop acting like children and think of something plausible?” Raven shouts, interrupting the quarrel. “We're losing time, goddamnit!” 

Indra suggests the rest of the group take an alternative route to the Church and cover Clarke and Lexa whilst they come close to Titus and Gustus to negotiate. The Church is large enough for the team to take cover and observe the course of actions, and each of them – Raven, Octavia, Carlton, and Indra herself – must hide at four different angles. Should any aggression occur, they must be able to intervene the fastest to protect the three other women. 

Raven proposes to the team that, whilst taking cover and protecting Clarke and Lexa, she will endeavour to override the communication jam on the Ark, which only allows members of the Authority to contact other citizens, and not vice versa. It shouldn't take too long, though, since the Authority doesn't have the skills and brain of a hacker. Octavia hisses at Lexa that they are losing time to find Abby and Lincoln because of her senseless argument with the doctor, as she grows more and more perturbed about her boyfriend. The engineer just replies with a glare and reloads her Cutter.

The engineer faces the preparation counter and puts her Cutter down, to avoid the rest of the group. She lies her palms open on the counter as her arms support the upper parts of her body. She comes across visions of Costia again, who is now standing next to her and placing a hand on the engineer's shoulder. 

“I'm sorry, love. I couldn't save you... I wish I knew it earlier. If only you had told me sooner...,” Lexa turns to “Costia” and apologises. 

“Costia” leans her head on the engineer's shoulder. “It's okay, Lexa. You're between the third and fourth stages of grief. Now, focus on figuring out a way to get to the Church, alright?” 

“Costia” smiles and says with her usual voice this time. There is something soothing in hearing her dead lover's voice again.

\- - -

Lexa and Clarke walk side by side in silence to the Church to negotiate with Titus and Gustus. They are visibly mad at each other, judging from the expression on their face; Lexa clenches and slightly moves her jaw a few times, whereas Clarke's brows furrow, letting show a small crack between her eyebrows. They both have their suit helmet open, yet the further they go into the gloomy corridor leading to the Church, the heavier the air becomes as cadavers have piled up and formed some small roadblocks. They tramp through the passageway as their boots make steeping sound similar to walking on mud. Each holds their Cutter tightly, ready to pull the trigger to attack whatever may be jumping at them. 

_You're almost there, Lexa. I can feel you._

The doors to the Church are left open; inside, a massive screen, stained by blood, showcasing Jaha's message to Arkers are being played on loops, yet the sound seems to be off. The four other doors leading to the Church are also open, which is an opportunity for the rest of the squad to ambush the Unitologists. 

Clarke and Lexa make their way through the aisle, glancing nervously at their surroundings. Decapitated corpses sit face-down on the benches, whereas the aisle is painted in red. Candles scatter all around the Church, whilst the tribune falls down on the floor. A few cups lie on the floor with a strange liquid oozing out of them. 

As soon as the two pals reach the middle of the aisle, a voice startles them and orders them to stop, throw their Cutters at the tribune, and raise their hands up. The same voice, through a microphone, enjoins the two women to advance slowly towards the screen. Once they face closely the colossal monitor, the voice then instructs them to kneel on the floor, with their hands always up in the air. 

“Well, well, Lexa... Darling, we told you to come alone,” a manly voice addresses the engineer from behind her back. “You just made a big mistake, darling...” 

As the man finishes talking, sounds of people voicing “ouch!” comes from the left side of the Church, as three guards push Raven, Octavia, and Indra onto the floor. One guard presses his boot onto Indra's wound as she lies on her back on the floor, causing her to cry out from pain. 

“You really think we're that stupid?” The same man continues. “We're omnipresent, darling!” 

The man then hits Lexa on the back of her head with the handle of his Cutter. The engineer falls down onto the floor, her head bumping onto the metal surface. Clarke yells the engineer's name, only to be muted by the appearance of her mother from the right side of the Church being held captive by Gustus, whilst the man points his Cutter at Lexa. 

The engineer struggles to turn around to confront her attack. “Titus, why are you doing this? Let my friends go! You have me now! We can negotiate.” 

Titus, still shoving his Cutter into Lexa's face, lets out a demoniac laugh. “Darling, it's not about you. It's about all of us. In unity we die!” Titus preaches. “Now, all of you have the choice between drinking poison, being shot in the head, or slitting your own throat. Choose one, the least painful, if you're a coward. The Marker wants all of us to do it as fast as possible.” 

“No! You are a coward!” Clarke intervenes. “You don't decide who lives or who dies. Humans have free will, and we'll be responsible for our own lives. You have no right to play god here!” 

Titus, offended by the doctor's comment, immediately grabs her hair and propels her on her back. “I can decide who lives and who dies whenever I want! I'm the messenger! I understand the divine messages of the Marker! It's telling us to be one again. Don't you think it's sublime, to die collectively for the same belief, for the same cause? Make Us Whole Again? To be the precursors to open the gates to the City of Light? And you, Clarke Griffin, you deserve to die first because you're not a believer. Just like your father. You're a heretic, the shame to our race!”

Clarke's face turns red from anger at the mention of her father. But she is powerless now, and cannot find some sensible words to retort to Titus's nastiness. She finds her vision blurred by the salted water gushing out from the corner of her eyes. 

“It hurts, doesn't it? Losing people you love,” Titus places his index finger on the Cutter's trigger to aim at the doctor and turns to Lexa. “I'm sure it'll hurt you even more, darling, watching someone you love die in front of you,” he smirks. 

“Titus, please. Don't do this,” the engineer pleads faintly as she finds herself crying. “She–she's all I have left...” 

“You still have me, darling. And Gustus. And the Afterlife. We'll meet again, remember?” 

Gustus, detaining Abby around his muscular arm with a Cutter aimed at her temple, carries a small cup containing poison, and sets it down next to Lexa. He eyes it to push the engineer to take a gulp, and proceeds to take a few steps back. 

The engineer looks at the cup and understands that it contains arsenic, which makes her shove it aside, causing the liquid to spill all over on the floor. 

“No! We may not meet again, Titus!” Lexa shouts as she pulls out a sharp screwdriver from the small storage pocket on her suit's forearm, and throws it confidently at Gustus's eye, thus stabbing through both his right eyeball and brain, as blood spurts out unstoppably from his eye. As a result, Abby breaks free from her captor and hides behind the benches. 

Octavia, receiving the green light from Lexa, instinctively takes out two screwdrivers from the side of her boots and spears through the skin under two guards' chin, hence killing them instantaneously and setting both Raven and herself free to rescue Indra. 

Titus, petrified by what Lexa and company have just done, waveringly fires a shot at Clarke, only to see the shot land on the giant screen, shattering it into pieces. Clarke just has enough time to run to her mother and hide.

Meanwhile, Lexa, unarmed, is accosting her former mentor. She is now standing unyieldingly on the stage of the Church. She doesn't appear fearful in front of a raging Titus with the Cutter still in his hand. 

“Lexa, you have no idea what you've just done! We were supposed to be one, to die _together_! We were supposed to go to the City of Light _together_! You just ruined it,” he aims shakingly at the engineer. “Your impulse puts our fate and your fate in danger! You're too blind to miss the opportunity granted to you! Your feelings for Clarke, your selfishness, they are your weaknesses!”

Lexa adamantly approaches Titus and places herself in front of his Cutter. “You're the real coward, Titus. Your teachings are bullshit to me. I can't believe my parents trusted you to raised me, and I can't believe I let you and Gustus brainwash me all those years. My feelings for others are not my weakness, and wanting to live is not an act of selfishness. By desiring to live, it's an act of rebellion for you Unitiologists, when your crap divine signs are here. My feelings make me human, because I am simply human, and I don't want to turn into one of those things! I have seen those things you call the Afterlife. I have seen the City of Light. You can call me an infidel now, Titus,” she raises her voice. “Come on. Pull the trigger. Do it! Like a coward you are.” 

Titus squeezes his lips shut and pulls the trigger. But the sound he expected from the Cutter is replaced by a clicking sound, informing him of the empty ammo clip. He then presses repeatedly on the trigger, yet the clicking sound cannot blow the engineer's head up. 

“This may be a sign of my immortality,” she jokes. “Or maybe your sins won't be pardoned. No salvation for you, fanatic!”

As soon as Lexa stops talking, she kicks Titus hard in the chest, launching him a few metres backwards. Her moment of triumph doesn't last long, as she hears noises of charging Necromorphs arrive to the Church's doors. Raven grabs the engineer's shoulders and urges her to leave. The team is forced to flee once again as Necromorphs flood the Church's aisle and challenge their survival skills. 

\- - - 

The herd of Necromorphs sprint towards Titus, who is trying to get up and rubbing his chest from Lexa's powerful kick. He turns around to spot two Feeders ready to bite his neck, but, instead, one Feeder jumps on his head and attempts to rip his head off of his body with its thin long arms as it lets out a high-pitched shriek.

“D–death is...n–not the end,” he mumbles in his dying breath, allowing the Feeders to devour him alive.

\- - -

_Lexa, it's okay. You'll find me again._

_Love, you're close to my heart. May we meet again._

_It's so lonely without you._

The engineer shakes her head a few times to erase Costia's voice as she escapes with the squad. Clarke is now running beside her mother; before going on the run again, they had a brief moment to exchange a hug and “are you alright?” and a nod. Indra is trying to keep up her pace with others, as her wound seems to be pacified, for now. Raven informs the group that before getting captured by the guards, she had managed to overcome the communication blockade again, so if anyone gets lost or wishes to find their loved ones, they can try to reach out to them. 

Octavia is obviously attempting to contact Lincoln, but the other side doesn't seem to pick up. 

The howls and crawling noise inside the vents are back again. Clarke has concluded that they were used as baits for the secret mission, in order to lure the monsters onto the Ark, instead of Jaha using his own balls to fetch them on board himself. It appears that the creatures have migrated onto the Mother Station through the ventilation system, which is actually their strategic means of travel to surprise their enemies, by just crashing down the vents. These creatures are not that unintelligent, for they used to be humans once... But the real question is, how come they can still be alive and chasing living lifeforms with their heads blown up by the Cutter? 

The team now ends up at the residential area on the Ark, a vast complex housing more than a thousand citizens in space, after zigzagging through the labyrinthine hallways. Death follows them, wherever they are. Or perhaps, death precedes them... Perhaps it was over before they had the chance to know it.

Raven shushes the group as she warns them to be utterly careful whilst crossing this part of the Ark, for there are a lot of detours, doors, and alleys, and mutated things could jump out of nowhere to attack them. Lexa resumes utilising her Rivet gun and hands her Cutter to Abby, since the doctor is certainly capable to handle it. As Abby takes a hold of the Cutter, her daughter advises her immediately that she has to dismember the creatures to kill them.

Octavia walks past Raven to lead the way, yet her intention focuses on finding Lincoln, in case he has made it back to their apartment for shelter and safety, despite the bloodbath and the growing vomit-like Corruption that inundate the entire area. She may be a bit too optimistic, but knowing that Lincoln is strong, she still has a reason to believe.

The echo of the tune “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” traverses the passageways throughout the residential area, whilst a few dolls can be heard speaking automatically and babies are believed to be crying inside the deserted apartments. 

_Save us, Lexa._ The engineer hears a baby voice speaking to her as it cries out hopelessly. 

_They're looking for you, Lexa. Save them before it's too late._

Lexa signals the group that she has overheard babies cry somewhere, but she doesn't know exactly where. Clarke narrows her eyes to question the engineer's perception, and inquires others whether they hear the same sound, to which Abby and Raven answer yes. 

The engineer trails behind the rest of the team and follows the crying to an apartment's door. When she opens it, she sees a toddler crawling towards her and pushes out a sob. Genuinely concerned by the absence of the toddler's parents, she warily approaches the baby and whispers “It's okay, you're safe.” But before Lexa even has the time to pick the baby up, Raven shows up at the apartment's door and commands the engineer not to touch it and get away from the tiny monster as soon as possible. The engineer protests, saying that she has to save it from the howling creatures. 

“Back up! The yellow sack is about to explode!” Raven shouts as she sprints towards the engineer. 

But it's too late. When Lexa turns around to glance at the abandoned baby, it lets out a high-pitched baby cry and blows up into pieces, flinging the mechanic and the engineer back against a bookshelf. Their back hits painfully against the metal wall as they try to stand up with so much difficulty. But before they even have time to stay firmly on their feet, a herd of Crawlers – mutated toddlers with their head upside down, their back's and belly's position is reversed, and a big yellow sack on their belly – speed at them. The engineer widens her eyes in horror as she comes to realisation that the previous baby which she has just seen was actually the same kind of monster. 

Raven pulls out her Ripper and sends two blades flying in the air at the crawling beasts, causing their yellow infected spots to burst open and the herd of monsters to be ripped apart. 

The engineer, with her back against the wall and her heart racing, appears paralysed by what she has just witnessed; she glances at the exploding toddlers and glances back at Raven again in non-comprehension. She is now even more terrified of what she can see, not knowing the things that she sees are actually harmful to her and other people. 

“Get your shit together, Woods!” The mechanic tosses her Ripper down onto the floor as she screams at a horrified Lexa. 

Before they spend a few minutes to catch a breath, sound of Cutters firing in the corridor disturbs them again. And, of course, the howls are back, and they are very clear and close this time. 

Raven grasps her Ripper and runs to the hallway just to face two charging Spitters at the door. She is fast enough to saw the creature's arms off of their body and proceeds to make her move towards the rest of the group who seems to be struggling to defeat a vertically large Necromorph with slashy arms and sacky belly. 

Clarke and Octavia are firing continually at the big creature, but their shots have hit its belly, engendering it to burst open. Once the Pregnant's belly is blown, a herd of Swarmers – the creatures stocked inside the Pregnant's tummy – leap outside to jump on Octavia's and Clarke's back. But, luckily, Indra covers them from behind by shooting her Triple Threat Rifle at the Swarmers as they die one by one. 

“What was that thing?” Abby asks her offspring. 

Clarke shakes her head with her lips squeezed shut. She looks around to find the engineer, but apparently she is not present in the corridor. Suddenly, two Leapers crash down the vent and crawls towards the rest of the group. But Lexa slides the apartment door's open, sprints at the first Leaper, and seizes its tail in cold blood. She wraps it roughly around her arms and places her right foot at the end of its spine, succeeding in breaking the spiky tail apart. Once the first Leaper is defeated, she uses her Rivet gun to pin the second Leaper's tail down onto the floor and begins stomping its tail and spine uncontrollably, resulting in the lower half of its body being smashed like tomato sauce. 

The rest of the team looks at the engineer with great astonishment when she has just made her come-back to save them.

“Seems like you just got your shit together, Woods,” Raven pats Lexa on the shoulder. 

“I'm sick of these hallucinations. I see living people, when actually, they are monsters... We need to find the artifact, to stop these things from killing us...,” the engineer replies unhappily. 

“If you need help, I'm here, Lexa,” Abby reaches for the engineer's hand and smiles at her warmly.

“Is it me, or is the air heavier to breathe?” Octavia interrupts.

“You're right, Octavia. I feel like coughing my lungs out here,” Indra adds. 

“There is a sort of green air coming out from the vents. It seems toxic,” Octavia points at the green gas spreading from the ventilation system. 

“We have to get your mother a suit, Clarke. Her doctor suit is too vulnerable to survive in this environment,” Raven says to the doctor.

“There is a suit kiosk near where we are. It's just at the end of this corridor,” Lexa looks at her navigation system to inform the group. “There might be enough suits for us.”

The group makes their way towards the suit kiosk as the creepy kindergarten music still runs through the residential area's passageways. Indra recommends the Advanced Suit to Abby, Clarke, and Octavia, since it is an elite combat suit, designed specifically for elite forces, with good resistance to Necromorph attacks. Abby goes inside the kiosk to receive her suit first, then follow Octavia and Clarke. Indra urges them to go faster, on account of the amount of carbon dioxide spread throughout the station. 

When it is Lexa's turn to upgrade her suit into an Elite Engineering suit, members of the Pack, resembling a herd of children, push out high-pitched screams and charge at the group. One manages to climb on the top of Octavia's head and tries to rip her head off of her body with its long and thin claws clinging onto her head tightly, but surprisingly strong for its child-like body. Clarke, sensing that the agricultural specialist is in danger, aims at the monster, but since the monster and Octavia are writhing uncontrollably, the doctor hesitates and has a hard time to shoot it down. 

“Just shoot it in the face, Clarke!” Octavia yells. 

Clarke holds her Cutter firmly with both of her hands and clenches her jaw. She fires a shot and closes her eyes, praying that the shot won't blow Octavia's head up. 

When Clarke opens her eyes, the creature has fallen onto the floor, whilst Octavia is now helping Raven and Abby fight off the herd of naked monsters, by instructing them to shoot these things in the face.

Lexa comes out of the kiosk to a chaotic battle against the Pack, in addition to Slashers and Lurkers which have just joined their pal monsters to attack the team. Her brand new suit is immediately tainted by the growth of the Corruption as she steps onto the vomit-like tissue on the floor. 

As Raven shoots out her blades to slice off the Lurkers' tentacles, one of them closes its tentacles and moves rapidly enough to dodge the blades. The Lurker then holds onto the wall, lets out a shriek, and hops onto Raven's shoulders, as it activates its three needle-like, acid-covered tentacles to sting her. The mechanic lets go of her Ripper and uses her arms to resist the sting, by grabbing two tentacles with her left hand and the last one with her right hand. Drops of acid fall onto the floor and onto her armour, causing her suit to be slightly eaten through by the green liquid. But Raven is strong-willed; she manages to break the creature's two tentacles with her left hand, and proceeds to crush it onto the floor, by throwing its last tentacle with her right hand. To make sure that the Lurker is really dead, she stomps it twice as blood gushes out from its already rotten body. 

But the drop of acid has now eaten through most of Raven's arm armour and created a large hole on her suit. She has to get to the suit kiosk and get a new suit, before the acid continues propagating through her skin. She has to assist the group in defeating the remainder of the Necromorphs ahead, in order to secure a new suit. 

Running out of ammo on her Javelin gun, Octavia has no option, but to take advantage of built-in kinesis and throw Necromorph body parts at the shrieking monsters. She succeeds in coordinating kinesis and her martial arts skills to throw slashy arms at the Pack and kick them hard in the face. One monster after another is collapses onto the floor, immobile. But, a surprised attack by a Leaper knocks Octavia down, as the scorpion-like monster now attempts to bite her neck with its long and pointy teeth covered in blood. 

Indra, alarmed at the dire situation, fires a few shots at the Pack to hinder their progress, and sprints towards Octavia to rescue the agricultural specialist. The Commander grabs the Leaper's tail and pulls it backwards to get the creature off of Octavia's body. She then sends for help from Lexa to cut off the Leaper's tail with the engineer's Cutter, as the monster wriggles in pain. Yet, Lexa is clever enough to thrash the monster's tail and lower body parts, and saves ammo for eventual dangers. Her suit and Indra's suit are now stained by rotten blood. 

“Thanks...,” Indra, frightened, looks at Lexa. “That's not what I meant... But you did a fine job...” 

Lexa just nods as a brief reply to the Commander. The two women then reunite with the rest of the team who has just finished taking down the last member of the Pack. Abby is still breathlessly asking Clarke for an explanation of what is happening, but Clarke insists that there is no time to explain and they ought to find the Holy Artifact and deactivate it.

“I hear a person coughing somewhere in this block of apartments,” Lexa interrupts. 

But the other women just look at her with disbelief, particularly Raven. 

Clarke seems to have a lightbulb above her head and suddenly remembers that Octavia is searching for her boyfriend, which means that Lincoln could be inside.

“But that's not possible!” Octavia disagrees. “He was with the elite guards! He can't just be inside our apartment just like that! He has a job to do.”

“He's calling your name, Octavia. And he's coughing like he's being poisoned,” Lexa adds. 

“I don't need your fucking hallucinations, alright?” Octavia raises her voice to threaten the engineer. “You only lead us to danger. You and your hallucinations put us all in danger.”

“Do you still want to save Lincoln? Do you?” The engineer emphasises. “If you care about him, you would be checking your place first. What if something happened? What if Jaha betrayed him, like he did to us?”

The mechanic, sensing the situation might escalate, pushes the two women's chest further away from each other. But even distance cannot stop them from glaring at each other like they are going to start a bloody sword fight. 

“You stop it! Both of you!” Clarke yells and turns to Octavia. “Lexa's right. What if Lincoln is being locked inside your apartment? We have to hurry before we are killed by whatever is in the air.”

Octavia points a finger at the doctor and replies with an angry, raspy voice. “Why am I not surprised that you're still defending her?” 

But Octavia is not stupid. She actually cares about Lincoln. She loves him. She wants to find him, so they can get the hell out of this forsaken place. 

She decides to gesture the team to follow her. 

\- - - 

When the group breaks through the door to Octavia's flat, the agricultural specialist is petrified by Lincoln's presence. He seems to have been tased and beaten, as blood rolls down from his left temple and lips. His arms are chained onto the wall, as though he was being crucified. His suit lies open on the floor, letting show his naked chest bruised by electric tasers. His head hangs loosely and he appears to be unconscious. 

Lexa shoots at Octavia an I-know-I'm-right look, whilst the rest of the team figures out a way to destroy the chains. Octavia slaps gently onto Lincoln's cheeks to wake him up, but Abby tells her not to do so. Abby proceeds to check his pupils and pulse, and announces that he is still breathing, yet they need to find him a new suit before his brain ceases being alimented by oxygen. 

Luckily, the chains are not that tight, so Raven can shatter them using the handle of her Ripper. Lincoln falls onto the floor, just to be caught in Octavia's arms, yet his body is too heavy, causing Octavia to fall down. She tells others to help her get inside his suit, whilst she enables the air filtration system inside her flat. 

It takes four women six minutes to get Lincoln inside his Elite Security suit. 

When the air is clear, all members open their helmet to breathe in and breathe out deeply, after having stored toxic gas inside their lungs. 

\- - - 

Lincoln coughs eight times before he can actually open his eyes. Octavia brightens at his quick recovery and asks him if he is alright. He gradually gets up and sits down, his back against the wall. 

“J–Jaha... He's lying,” Lincoln manages to blurt out before the coughing overwhelms him again. 

“We know,” Octavia smiles as she strokes his face. “Tell us what happened.”

“Tell me what happened to all of you on that wrecked ship first. I think our stories are connected,” he replies. 

“Jaha sent us there to die,” Octavia manages a vengeful expression. “We escaped, but we helped him unleash an outbreak. I don't even know how to call those creatures.” 

“After you guys went on that ship, he told me and my force to secure a place. He called it the 'Holy Chamber'. Then, he sent me to escort Marcus Kane to his apartment, where he was beaten up, and I was knocked on the back of my head. When I woke up, my head was numb, but I was chained inside our place and couldn't breathe,” he strokes the back of his head and touches a few bruises on his tummy. “I don't remember being tortured at all... My team betrayed me...”

The other women don't appear surprised at all, when Lincoln mentions Jaha's betrayal. It is as though they are so used to it. 

“We're running out of time and oxygen. We have to move and shut down the Marker,” Lexa says. “Do you remember where it is, the Chamber?” She asks Lincoln. 

“I do, but Marcus knows the passcode. He tried to stop Jaha from accessing it, but Jaha found a way to get in. We have to find Marcus,” he pauses. “Hacking won't solve the puzzle,” he turns to Raven before she even has the time to say anything witty about hacking.

“I know where Marcus lives,” Abby states.

\- - -

It turns out that Marcus lives only two alleys away from Octavia's flat. The Corruption has now covered the entire metal floor and hindered the group's steps as they walk unsteadily and heavily to reach their destination. Should they open their helmet, they may puke immediately, as vomit and death are the sole odours throughout the Ark.

When they burst the door open, Marcus can be seen lying on the floor as the Corruption reaches his apartment. He is tied to a chair and covered in blood, without any suit nor protection.

“He's still breathing! Untie him and find him a suit!” Abby rushes towards the unconscious man. 

Lincoln looks around and opens a few closet to find Marcus a suit. Clarke is assisting her mother to revive Marcus, whilst Raven and Octavia are trying hard to get the chair back on its four feet. 

“Lexa,” “Costia” appears and stands next to the engineer, placing a hand on her arm. “You have to kill Marcus. He's an obstacle for us to be together as one.”

“Why do you want me to kill, Costia?” Lexa turns to her old flame.

“It's 'kill, or be killed', Lexa,” “Costia” strokes Lexa's cheek. “Love, we shall be one, soon. Eliminating him will be the first step. Then the rest, then you.”

“I can't do that,” the engineer firmly answers. 

As soon as Lexa ends her reply, “Costia” shoots her a regretful glance and disappears. The engineer keeps looking to her right side to see whether her old flame will reappear, but she is just standing next to Marcus's kitchen counter and staring at the void. 

_We shall be together as one._

“Lexa? Lexa?” Clarke calls. “Did you have another hallucination again?”

It takes the engineer thirty seconds to be brought back to reality by Clarke's voice. 

\- - -

Once secured in his EarthGov Security suit, Marcus slowly gains back his consciousness and wakes up in pain. The first person he sees is Abby, to whom he tells that he is surprised to learn that there are a few survivors left, despite the raging outbreak of human-eating monsters and organic killing machines.

“Do you remember anything?” Abby inquires.

“Yes, Abby. Jaha had locked me up before he sent your daughter on that wrecked ship. I–I wanted to stop him, but it was too late. I managed to escape and fled to the Marker Chamber to lock it down, but Jaha was always one step faster... He released a toxic gas and left me here alone...,” Marcus answers. 

“How can we trust you?” Raven says to Marcus, her arms folded defensively. 

“You don't have to... I'm part of the Authority, but I'm also part of the Resistance. But we can stop Jaha, _together_.”

“Why do you always say the same thing in different ways? That phrase 'Make Us Whole Again'?” Clarke shouts.

Marcus, feeling guilty, explains to Clarke and the group that he doesn't believe in the mantra. He is with the Government, and they are all fighting against the far-reaching influence of the Church. What the Government wants has always been planet-mining to retrieve valuable resources to space colonies and Earth, following the primary resource crisis a few centuries earlier. But the Church, after the discovery of the Black Marker on Earth, collaborated with scientists and Government officials to advance their agenda and expand their religion, to build other Markers all around space. They will not stop until the City of Light is open to all lifeforms. 

He doesn't want to be seen as a good guy, Marcus. He just wants to help the team. He wants to continue the Resistance's work, until the Church's agenda is erased. Unitologists are fanatical, and they will not cease. 

He seems to be genuine, but who knows what's behind that Government mask?


	7. Don't Make Us Whole Again.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Marker is close, but seems unreachable... Clarke and Lexa fight and it's cheesy... Loads of yelling and screaming...

Marcus shows the squad a secret passage through which they will have to crawl to reach the Marker's chamber, understood to be located near the engineers' room for a reason. The passage is presumably safe, since the ventilation system is not installed inside it. It should guide them to the restricted area where only high-profile members of the Authority can access. 

He reveals to the team that he was not a viable subject for Jaha's classified experiment and he was left to rot in his home. Before going unconscious, he spotted a familiar silhouette speaking to Jaha about the success of a certain experiment, powered by the Marker's energy. In times of dizziness and deafening noise, he couldn't quite figure out who was talking to the Chancellor.

He eventually tells Abby and Clarke the truth about Jake. And Lexa about Costia and Polaris. Whilst crawling through the secret passage. 

“Your husband was a member of the Resistance. It was too dangerous for him to get you involved, Abby. He couldn't risk you and Clarke...,” he pauses. “It was him who led me to see things with my eyes, to see Unitologists as they were.

“He kept a journal with him to document Unitologist abuse and illegal experiments on human beings. I believe he had recorded video logs, too, but destroyed them quickly before his floating. He wrote everything down about the effects of the Marker on human minds, all those hallucinations, insomnia, violent behaviour, seeing dead loved ones and relatives. People started killing one another, mistaking others for mutated monsters and imagining strange scenes. I myself have seen my mother in person, even though she was gone a few years ago...”

Upon hearing Marcus's mention of the effects of the Marker on human mind, particularly the return of dead loved ones in hallucinations, Lexa freezes as she finally gets a hold of the truth.

“He was caught by Jaha, and was sentenced to death for being a part of the Resistance, for exposing cruelty. He was so ready to go public, but Jaha had always been one step faster than he was, than all of us. I–I couldn't protect him, I'm sorry... I wanted to go public, too, but he advised me not to. I had to keep the Resistance secret and active, even after his death. I still keep his promise.

“Lexa, Jake knew about Aegis VII. The incident on the colony happened exactly as it is right now. Your parents and sister were part of the Resistance, too. They went to the colony to prevent Unitologists from exploiting the Marker to trigger an outbreak, but it was too late... Your family was murdered by Unitologists who began unleashing those monsters all over Aegis VII. The destruction of the colony was not a terrorist act, and happened after your family's demise.”

“Why didn't they tell me? Why did they leave me? Why did they confide me in fanatical Unitologists like Titus and Gustus?” Lexa cries behind Marcus. 

_Kiddo, we were trying to protect you._

_Lexa, our girl, we wanted to keep you safe. We couldn't lose you, too._

“This was a complex matter. Titus and Gustus were indeed your parents' close friends, but they and you parents were on opposite sides. They claimed your guardianship because they thought they were entitled to do so. Your parents didn't leave any will, did they?” Marcus clarifies. 

_He's right, Lexa. Unitologists are evil. They want influence and power. They want followers. They will brainwash anyone into believing their lies._

“I know you're still uneasy about your parents and Costia... But Costia had reached out to us before she died. On the day she came back from Polaris, she had a secret meeting with the Resistance and handed us medical reports and video logs on illegal experiments by Becca Whitenight. It was utterly unbelievable, what they were doing on Polaris... But Costia remained faithful to her ethics,” Marcus continues explaining. 

_Lexa, love, you are close. I can feel your heart beating. Come closer. It's time to be together as one._

The engineer suddenly stops crawling and wraps her hands around her head in pain. She keeps mouthing “Get out of my head!” as her dead lover's subtly malicious voice continues taunting her and telling her the exact opposite of what she has to do. 

Marcus stops and shushes the woman in pain, advising her to fight it until they reach their destination. But the pain seems uncontrollable and more intense as they come closer to the source of the problems. 

Abby tells Clarke that she has just heard Jake's voice, whilst Raven, Indra, and Lincoln report having headaches. Octavia sees her dead brother behind her and Lincoln is talking her out of her hallucination, whereas Marcus can feel his mother whispering to him. 

_Except_ Clarke. Who doesn't experience anything, curiously. She doesn't appear to be affected by long exposure to the Marker, like Marcus has just expounded. She lies on her stomach in confusion and fear as the rest of the group struggles to gain back their sanity. 

“I know it's hard to say this, but if we're all having headaches or hallucinations, it means we're close to the Marker. We have to fight and stop the Marker,” Marcus resumes crawling, despite the pain in his temples. 

“But don't we have to find whatever is poisoning the air? Oxygen is low and our suits can't store enough,” Octavia remarks. 

“Do you know where the toxins might come from?” Raven asks.

“Where the air filtration system is. _My_ department,” Octavia affirms. “Jaha is not dumb. To poison people faster, you need the source of air filtration for the contagion to spread. Besides, we're close to the engineers' room, right? We shouldn't be too far from the air filtration room.”

\- - - 

Marcus announces that the group has reached the end of the secret passage and they should be able to get out safely. Pulses sent by the Marker can be felt subtly, as the walls and floor quiver, and sound of loose rivets resonate throughout the empty area. To the left of the group shows the exit from the restricted area, leading to the engineers' room and the air filtration room. To their right rests a dark hallway leading to a dim flashing light at the end of it. The dim flashing light should be the chamber where the Marker is located. 

But Octavia suggests they separate into two groups, one heading to the air filtration room, whilst the other to the Marker chamber. If anything happens, they must regroup in the engineers' room. They cannot, altogether, shut down the Marker and restore breathable air to the Ark. 

The agricultural specialist automatically volunteers to find the source of the toxic gas, followed by Lincoln's hand-raising gesture to be with his girlfriend. However, Lexa says that they cannot do anything alone, and need a third person to join. 

The engineer tells Clarke and the rest of the team to follow Marcus to the Marker chamber and figure out a way to shut it down. With Raven's genius brain and Marcus's insight, they can bring it down. 

“No, Lexa!” Clarke grips Lexa's arm with both of her hands. “What if something happens to you? Stay with me, please...,” she pleads. 

Lexa removes Clarke's hands from her arm and their fingers intertwine. “You're immune to the Marker. I am not. What if I hallucinate and accidentally shoot you, or someone else? I can't let myself kill people I care about by accident, Clarke.” 

Clarke holds the engineer's hands more tightly, her brows furrowed and her head shaking in refusal. 

“May we meet again, Clarke. But I'm sure we will,” Lexa smiles and places a kiss on the doctor's forehead. 

\- - -

“Thank you, Lexa,” Octavia says to the engineer as Lincoln, Lexa, and her find their way to the air filtration room. “I was mad at you for no reason... I thought you were crazy with your hallucinations, but you saved his life,” she glances at Lincoln, smiling briefly. 

“It's okay, Octavia. I'm just _unsane_... With all those things around us, we can't really be normal, can we?” Lexa answers. “We all do crazy things for people we love.” 

Octavia just smiles back and holds Lincoln's hand. They reach an Y intersection; to their left, the arrows points at the air filtration room, and to the right, the engineers' room. They know where they have to go.

\- - - 

Marcus struggles to override the access code, whereas the rest of the group glances around the restricted area cautiously, ready to defend themselves from the raging Necromorphs. Their suits are collectively emitting beeping sounds to indicate that, in half an hour, the squad won't be able to open their helmet, for the air contamination will reach its peak and anyone without a suit will immediately die from intoxication.

“He changed the code. I can't access it,” Marcus nervously informs the group. 

“You sure hacking won't work?” Raven turns around and asks. 

“It won't. He changed the access configuration. The code doesn't work anymore, but the scanner now asks for human DNA to enter the chamber,” the Council member points at the scanner just above the sliding doors and places himself in front of it. But the automatic responder doesn't recognise him and denies him access. 

Clarke suddenly alerts the team of imminent danger ahead, as she reports having heard guttural sound approaching on the other side of the restricted area. Two mutated creatures with three legs move slowly towards the team, yet stop half way to spit green liquid at them. Marcus receives the acid puke on his left leg, causing him to be temporarily paralysed and his armour to be slightly eaten through. He kneels onto the floor and holds his leg painfully, as Indra squats to check up on him and advises him not to touch the wound. 

But the horror doesn't just stop here. A lullaby-like shriek gets closer and more audible, as Abby spots a thin and tall Necromorph with inexplicably long and clawy hands. It charges at the group and spreads its hands to attack.

Raven flies one blade at the first Puker to cut off its lower limbs, but, in spite of the absence of it legs, it still manages to crawl with its arms and vomits the green and burning liquid at the humans. The mechanic and Clarke succeed in dodging the acid before it can paralyse them, like it has just done to Marcus. 

Abby fires incessantly at the thin and tall creature's arms, yet dismembering its limbs causes the monster's arms to fall off and transform into smaller, jumpy creatures with long legs. She doesn't have enough ammo and begins to browse her suit's pockets for a new ammo clip, but Indra is quick enough to cover Abby and take down the jumpy monsters, before they can stab through anyone's suit and infect them with the virus.

The first Puker dodges Raven's blades as they slice the second Puker's arms and head off. The first Puker, even without its lower limbs, gallops into the direction where Clarke is standing, and strikes her onto the floor. It holds her shoulders firmly to the ground and opens its toothless, stinky mouth full of acid to bite her neck. The Puker's attack on Clarke launches a signal for other Necromorphs to come out and join the conversion effort. Slashers, Spitters, Leapers, Crawlers, and Lurkers collectively crash down the vents and accelerate their pace to encircle the group. 

Clarke struggles to get the creature off of her body as she encounters difficulty breathing. But Marcus forcefully grabs its left arm to push it away from the doctor, and stomps the creature continually to its death. He then extends a hand to Clarke to help her get up as Clarke shoots him a nod to thank him. 

“Fire at the yellow sacks!” Indra shouts. “They will explode all at once!”

“They won't stop coming! Look at the herd!” Marcus shouts back.

Raven fires a few blades at the Slashers and Spitters, and turns to Marcus. “Since Jaha experiments on human beings, I don't think we really need human DNA to access the chamber. What if these creature's DNA suffices? They were once humans, right?”

“Try it! I'll cover you!” Clarke stands in front of Raven to let her friend use kinesis on Necromorph corpses and place the in front of the scanner.

Clarke fires non-stop at the herd of charging Necromorphs, whilst Raven manipulates with kinesis to pick up dead corpses and hovers them over the scanner. For the first attempt, the built-in automatic responder reads aloud the name and the number of the test subject who eventually became a Necromorph via illegal experimentation. However, as soon as it finishes identifying the subject, it says aloud “Access Denied”.

Raven quickly drops the corpse and picks up another one next to the access keyboard. 

_Access Denied._

She tries again. 

_Access Denied._

“Raven! Hurry up! We're running out of ammo!” Indra yells.

She tries again.

_Charles Pike. Test subject number 8167. Access Granted._

The doors to the chamber slide open, displaying a dark hallway and another layer of doors ahead. Raven screams for the team to enter as fast as possible as she pulls Clarke's arms inside the presumably safe zone. Indra retreats and Abby follows, but Marcus has advanced a bit too far towards the herd of hungry Necromorphs to take care of them from a close range. 

“Marcus! Let's go!” Abby shouts.

Marcus looks at the herd of raging monsters one last time and turns around to reach the chamber. His foot still hurts from the previous acid attack, causing him to limp miserably to the chamber. But, in the moment between life and death, life decides to send him to death as a gift; a Puker spits out acid on his wound again, engendering his armour to be eaten through as the acid burns through his foot. Marcus falls down and crawls at the doors, where Indra and Abby are ready to reach for his hands. 

Meanwhile, Raven is anxiously pressing on a button from inside the chamber to keep the doors open, yet to no avail. The closing can't be stopped.

But the doors have already been sliding half shut. And nobody can dare sprint at Marcus to drag him into the chamber. Nobody can be fast enough to help him in. Indra pulls Abby's hand back inside the safe zone to prevent it to be smashed. 

Marcus's right hand is crushed and detached from his body by the weight of the metal doors. 

When the doors seal shut, his final scream can be heard from the other side, along with the guttural sound of the monsters.

\- - - 

The air filtration room is now covered in the Corruption. Trees and leaves have been taken over by the smell of death and blood. Some strange puffing sounds and sharp animal-like growls can be heard from a close distance.

Clouds of fog have blurred the room. Danger is everywhere. Tubes containing dead living organisms can barely be seen in this gloomy room. Red alarm lights rotate to indicate the lowest level of oxygen remaining, whilst an automatic voice warns of the presence of living organisms contaminating the air filtration system. 

“Do you hear that wheezing noise? Can you assure me that I'm not hallucinating again?” Lexa asks her company. 

The couple just nods back at the engineer and places their index finger over their lips. The squad firmly raises their weapon, ready to scout the room for contaminants. 

Three silhouettes emerge from three different directions and stroll towards the group. They are accompanied with three glowing yellow sacks, which they drag difficultly on the floor. Their faces are melted and their body seems to be made out of hollow flesh. They scream out sharp and short howls as they move. 

But those are not the group's only guests; a few Leapers and Slashers creep behind the Exploders, followed by Pregnants which are trying to emerge to the front. The herd of Necromorphs seem to be protecting something else. If not the Marker, then _what_?

“Shoot at the yellow things! They'll explode all at once!” Octavia commands as the team reloads their weapons to prepare for the forthcoming bulletstorm.

Lincoln fires at the first yellow sack, making the herd of Necromorphs in his visual field explode, but from the belly of the Pregnant burst out several Swarmers jumping on him at great speed. They quickly jump on his back and head to bite through his armour. Lincoln has to shake his body and taps on his back with his Triple Threat rifle to destroy the tiny monsters. 

Octavia showcases her skills with the Javelin gun; the explosion causes the Necromorph flesh to be blown up. However, a Leaper takes the least damage with its head exploded, but even without its head, it can still move and retain its flexibility to dodge several Javelins at once. Frustrated with its velocity, the agricultural specialist shoots stasis at the creature, and proceeds to finish it with just two Javelins spiking through its tail.

Lexa is the one encountering the worst hardship. In addition to the voracious beasts in front of her, she also spots “Costia”'s human silhouette amongst the sea of monsters. “Costia” seems to be just fine, walking amongst the mutated creatures without fear of being attacked. 

“Let them bring me to you, love. You're almost there,” “Costia” whispers.

The engineer closes her eyes to differentiate hallucinations from reality. Yet, at the moment her eyes open again, “Costia” is still there. But this time, her former flame has taken a few steps back, whereas the Slashers are ready to just chop her into pieces. 

Sensing Lexa's reluctance and unresponsiveness, Octavia applies stasis on the two charging Slashers and shoots at them in the limbs to save the engineer from an imminent painful death. 

“What the fuck, Lexa?” Octavia raises her eyebrows quizzically. “Do you wanna get out alive or not?” 

Ironically, they live in a universe where the definition of alive is rather vague, or nonexistent. And, perhaps, the universe is _not_ on their side, at all, nor has it ever been.

“I do want to get out of here alive, Octavia, but not like these _alive_ monsters!” The engineer screams and regains her fighting skills to wipe out the mutated creatures ahead. Costia's silhouette has gone, but the echo of her voice lingers on, calling Lexa to _be there_.

“Then don't make us whole again! Don't make them whole again!” Octavia shouts back.

They fight until the wheezing sound is the only monstrous sound that they can only hear. 

They trace to the first source of the wheezes, only to find a large kneeling monster on the floor. Its lungs resemble a giant balloon that inflates and deflates itself steadily, whilst simultaneously emitting a cloud of green gas into its surroundings. The creature's head has been replaced by a hollow skull, and its skin has melted and smells like rotten flesh.

Lincoln fires his rifle at the Wheezer's head, but the pulse rounds solely push the beast to gasp louder and unleash a larger amount of toxic gas, whilst its balloon-like lungs grow progressively bigger. But, spotting that the lungs would likely be its weakness, he advises the two women to take a few steps back as he shoots repeatedly at its lungs, causing the creature to blow up. However, the explosion is so loud and violent that it sends the three-people army flying a few metres backwards, as they land hurtfully onto the sticky floor.

“Ouch!” Octavia strokes her back. “Now we know how to get rid of these things.” 

Lincoln stands up and extends an arm to help his girlfriend up. The engineer gets up and tells the couple to find the second Wheezer, whereas she will head into the opposite direction to kill the thrid Wheezer. 

This time, the team takes caution by killing the contaminants from a safe distance. As the Wheezers are eliminated, the automatic voice indicates that the toxic elements have been destroyed, thus restoring breathable oxygen to the Ark. 

But the group's joy doesn't last long; two minutes after the return of oxygen to the Mother Station, a loud explosion vibrates the air filtration room, seeming to originate from somewhere close to the Marker chamber. The automatic voice informs the group of a vacuum, as Lexa's navigation system indicator shows the location of the vacuum in the restricted area. 

Now, they know where to go in case of emergency. Especially Lexa.

\- - - 

Even before the group has the time to mourn the loss of Marcus, footsteps can be heard coming out from the sterilisation room.

A person in a Zealot suit walks out of the sterilisation room, covered in blood, and laughs maniacally. Their name tag shows the name “Jackson”.

Abby recognises the voice. “J–Jackson?”

But Jackson keeps laughing. In his left palm lies a remote control. 

“Where have you been all these months? Why haven't you been in medical?” Abby asks. 

Jackson stops laughing. “Because I found a better job. I found my passion, Abby,” he pauses and lowers his voice. “But you destroyed my creation! All those magnificent creatures, including Charles Pike!” He yells at the team and points his finger at them. “Can you see it? Can you see the gates to the City of Light? Can you see those beautiful things we're all destined to be? Thanks to the Marker! Oh my! The Marker is sublime! The Marker has made us whole again! And the rest, the rest is your choice. It's join, or die, Abby.” 

“You! You've been experimenting on innocent people! You betrayed your ethics, Jackson! Your mother would be so disappointed in you!” Abby intends to approach Jackson with her Cutter pointed at him.

Yet, Jackson raises the remote control and signals Abby to stop. “Easy! Okay? Easy! If I press this button, all of us are going to die, together! There are explosives around this area, but not powerful enough to destroy the Holy Artifact,” he smirks. “But come on! There's no pain in the City of Light! Can't you see how peaceful the Afterlife is? No pain, no human idiocy, just peace.”

Clarke points her Cutter at Jackson's face. “No! We refuse to be part of your destruction! We've seen your City of Light and it's not pretty! And you're the ambassador of human imbecility!”

Jackson bursts out into laughter. “Can you hear it? The sound of the immortal moving closer to us? Don't you want to be immortal? Don't you want to see your father again, Clarke?” He provokes the doctor. “Don't you want to see your husband again?” He looks at Abby. “And you, Raven. Don't you want to see your traitor parents again?” He irritates the mechanic this time. 

Raven immediately places her finger on the Ripper trigger and moves closer to Jackson. “Don't you fucking call my parents 'traitors'! You are a fucking disgrace to humanity!” She snarls. 

With Raven's action, Jackson places his thumb on the remote control's button. “Come on, Indra. You are the chief, our Commander. Show an example,” he incites Indra.

“No,” the Commander replies solemnly in a husky voice.

But her refusal was sufficient enough for Jackson to say “See you all in the City of Light, then!”, as he presses the button. His action causes an explosion, as a vacuum is created right next to the sterilisation room, sucking the squad and Jackson into the void.

When Jackson is plunged into space, he is rescued instantly by an escape ship. He doesn't seem to be injured at all by the explosion, and moves with his thrusters into the open door on the side of the ship. Meanwhile, the team is still struggling to regain balance and regroup after the detonation. 

The ship speeds off, leaving the team in the void to rot. The blast has attracted Lurkers into space as these monsters spread out their tentacles to launch acid at the floating humans. 

Raven stabilises herself with her thrusters and makes a gesture for the rest of the group to follow her. She remembers the only place where they ought to go in case of emergency.

Nonetheless, Abby is in pain after the violent detonation. She cannot feel her left leg, as it appears to have collided against a debris, when they were pulled outside of the Ark. 

\- - - 

“Did you hear that?” Lexa tells Octavia and Lincoln. “We have to get back and find the others!” 

“Where exactly?” Lincoln inquires.

“The engineers' room! We have to get there,” Octavia says. 

\- - - 

Raven has to hack the airlocks to the engineers' room open, since power has vanished from the Ark, as Clarke and Indra pull Abby inside the gravity stabilisation room first. When their magnetic boots land onto the floor and the first airlock slides shut, Raven proceeds to open the second airlock. Everyone collapses onto the floor in the engineers' room from fatigue and the severity of the detonation, and Abby from injury.

Clarke opens her helmet and checks up on her mother's wound. A sharp debris seems to have sliced through Abby's suit as her left leg is cut open, around the lower thigh area. It isn't life-threatening, thankfully, yet Clarke lacks the supplies to stop the bleeding.

“The others are supposed to be back soon. They figured a way out to bring back oxygen,” the mechanic says optimistically. “I can hack the door open for them, but how about your mom, Clarke?” 

“I'm fine, Raven,” Abby grimaces. “The bleeding will stop.” 

“Mom, we have to get back to medical. The bleeding won't stop!” Clarke scowls. 

The exchange is interrupted by the knocking sound onto the main entrance. Indra becomes alert and raises her Triple Threat rifle to deal with whatever is on the other side of the door.

But a familiar voice puts the team in a situation of relief. The others have made it back alive.

Raven tells Lexa, Octavia, and Lincoln to stay patient for a few minutes as she attempts to hack the door open for them. The mechanic opens the hacking panel from inside and reroutes a few circuits, hence succeeding to slide the door open for the other half of the squad. 

Indra immediately shakes Lincoln's hand as the two are happy to be together as a team again. Octavia exchanges a smile and a nod with Raven. 

“Clarke! Are you okay?” Lexa sprints towards the doctor. “What happened?” Her eyes bug out as she sees Abby lying on the floor in pain. 

“Jackson caused the explosion in the Marker chamber and created a vacuum. The doors to the chamber are jammed and I don't think we can stop the Marker. We have to escape this doomed space ship as soon as possible,” Clarke tells Lexa. 

“How? Are we going to scout the entire station for an escape pod? To go through all that shit again?” Octavia has a face like thunder and looks askance at Clarke. 

Lincoln holds his girlfriend's shoulders to stop her from screaming at Clarke. 

“Is it over? Are we really stuck in this shit hole?” Raven asks the engineer. “What can we do from this room, Pride and Prejudice?” 

Lexa walks towards the airlock and tilts her body against it in hopelessness. It feels like the end.

“Kiddo, it's okay. You're safe for now in this room. You've been through a lot,” “Anya” places a hand on the engineer's shoulder and smiles proudly at her.

The engineer doesn't look convinced as she turns her head to the right to look at her sister. 

“Lexa, our girl, you are a warrior. You are smart. Think of something, sweet baby girl,” “her parents” appear on the left to encourage her. 

For some reasons, the engineer still doesn't grasp why the hallucinations of her family appear more peaceful, more encouraging, than those of Costia. True, she loves her family, even though they had been apart from her for a long time. True, she came to terms with her family's demise long before than Costia's. 

She is starting to think that, maybe, just maybe, her hallucinations actually _reflect_ her state of mind.

Maybe her visions of Costia are mostly violent and entice her towards death, because she is afraid of _love_. _Love is weakness_ , as Costia uttered before her final moment, and it did not take the engineer that long to internalise her old flame's last words. Costia was a chapter in Lexa's book of life lessons; the engineer has become since terrified to open up to anyone again, to trust anyone, to truly love anyone. Because of the hallucinations of the people whom she loves and once cherished. Because of the mental battle against the devilish thoughts and delusions.

Maybe, it is because of Lexa's incapacity to come to terms with Costia's death that renders her hallucinations of her lost love violent and irreconcilable. 

In the muffled words said behind her, the engineer can't quite decipher if it is Jake's voice who has just murmured to her the metaphor “Remember: the sailor who saves everyone from the sea storm of corruption and extinction with a sanctuary beneath this ship”, or Raven who has just fancied having a huge ship that saved Jackson, which would come to their rescue.

And she remembers _something_. 

The engineer turns around to face the fading, yet smiling, visions of her family. Jake is squatting next to his family, but he, too, is fading away, and all Lexa can remember before the disappearance of her hallucination of him is his encouraging smile, reminiscent of when he was still training her in this room.

They have all faded away, and Lexa is now facing the rest of the team, gazing at her for a solution. 

“Please help me move this table,” she points at the huge block of granite serving as the main desk in this room, and moves closer to it.

Raven, Octavia, Lincoln, and Indra hastily join the effort. At the moment Clarke begins to stand up, Lexa gestures her to sit down and take care of her mother instead.

It takes the squad three minutes to move the giant chunk of granite aside. However, what they discover is vital; a hatch with what seems to be Jake's handwriting “This is the real Ark!” on it could be the key to their eventual survival. 

“Your father just saved us,” Lexa breathes in and out from weariness, but still manages to says to Clarke joyfully.

The engineer then opens the first hatch and climbs down to open the second hatch, and the group follows her with excitement. She helps Abby climb down from inside the gunship and begins to activate it. She seems to be typing something hurriedly on the keyboard and waves at the others to buckle up.

“I'll go grab a few things in the locker,” Lexa instantly climbs up when Clarke has just finished climbing down the ladder. 

Clarke, puzzled by Lexa's decision, follows the engineer back to the room and closes the hatch leading directly onto the gunship. She resumes climbing up, just to spot Lexa trying to seal the hatch to the engineers' room shut. 

“Clarke! Why are you up here?” Lexa bugs her eyes out as the hatch is half-way closed and Clarke is on her sight. She quickly pulls the hatch open for Clarke and helps the doctor up. 

“No. Why are _you_ up here?” Clarke points her index finger on Lexa's chest.

“Get back on the ship, Clarke. I've already programmed it to reach Mars. It's your last chance to live. It will leave in thirty seconds!”

“It's _our_ last chance,” the doctor corrects.

Their heated conversation is interrupted by Raven's attempt at communication via the RIG. “Where in the hellhole are you two? I can't stop this thing from leaving for Mars and it will take off in twenty five seconds!”

“Go! Get back, Clarke!” Lexa shakes Clarke's shoulders. 

“You have to go back with me! You have to come with us!” Clarke glowers at Lexa. 

“This is unfinished business! I have to stop the Marker! I know how to stop it!”

“Whatever you're going to do, I won't just sit there and watch you die!”

“You fucking assholes! Get your asses back now! It's leaving in ten seconds!” Raven screams over the radio. 

“Why are you doing this, Clarke? Why are you so stubborn? Why do you risk your life for me? You still have your mother, you still have your family. You have to protect her. I have no one left! I'm stuck with these visions of my family and Costia! My dead lover is haunting me and harassing me even in my hallucinations! Isn't it better for me if I die? I just want these things to stop!” 

“Fuck you assholes! This shit is leaving!” Raven yells again as the gunship takes off. “This is not over, Pride and Prejudice! You can outsmart me once, but not twice!” 

Abby is calling desperately for her daughter's name over the radio. But Clarke and Lexa don't even bother answering amidst their quarrel.

“Beca–,” Clarke swallows back her tears and looks at Lexa in the eye. “Because I _love_ you. Because you matter to me, Lexa. I want you, and I can't let myself watch you die. Stop believing you're alone in this world! I'm your best friend, your family, even. We're all your family, Lexa,” she sniffs.

The engineer just freezes. After all these years, she has always been clueless of Clarke's feelings for her. She has always had the impression that, when Clarke decided to pursue her career and eventually took up her job as a medical officer on the Mother Station, she would have to spend more time concentrating on her duty, hence, no more time to think of anything else other than her job. Lexa had the impression that Clarke was drifting away from her, that their friendship would end, due to barriers and separation. 

And then, Lexa found Costia. She found Costia in Clarke's classroom in medical training. 

Lexa is starting to realise that she loved Costia out of spite, to hurt Clarke because they couldn't spend more time together. That was one of the reasons why Lexa loved Costia. Costia was intelligent and irresistible; she was perhaps even brighter than Clarke, a harder-working person than Clarke. Yet, having originated from a low-income household on the Ark, she couldn't attain what Clarke had achieved, and decided to take on less prestigious job titles with equally challenging tasks, instead.

But little did Lexa know that Clarke had always loved her. From the beginning. Her initial love for the engineer had not been as strong and developed as it is right now, but it was a form of love, nonetheless. Love can grow. 

And now, Lexa doesn't know what to say to the woman in front of her. She has always been making everything about herself. She has always been bringing everything to herself, and ignoring what others are feeling. _Love is weakness_ has made her indeed weak, _not_ because of her capacity for love, yet, due to her blindness, her selfishness, her disregard for others' feelings, and her incapability to profoundly understand it and its different forms and stages.

She cares about others, but not in the right way, and not for the right reasons. She wants to be selfless, but she does it selfishly. 

Lexa looks guiltily down at the floor in her brooding. But Clarke places a hand on her cheek and lifts her chin up. The doctor then kisses the engineer as tears run down their faces. 

Although Lexa is surprised by Clarke's kiss, she simply lets herself immerse into the warmth and passion of the brief exchange. She is freaking out, she is shivering, yet she doesn't even want to let go. 

In Clarke's love, she may have found the key to acceptance, understanding, and forgiveness.


	8. Everything Is In Your Head.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People and things collapse. Screaming, crying, perfect storm...

Clarke embraces Lexa as the engineer buries her face into the doctor's shoulder and hair. But at the corner of her eye, she can still catch a glimpse of “Costia” who is glaring intensely at the lovebirds as her mouth and eyes transform into three different glowholes. “She” fades away at the moment Lexa decides to ignore her and close her eyes. 

“We have to go. Before it's too late,” Lexa lets go of the hug and pulls Clarke's arm towards the airlock. 

“How are we going to destroy it?”

“We will find a way in from the vacuum. I will try to hack the sterilisation room open.”

Lexa opens the first airlock as the two women step into the gravity stabilisation room. Once the second airlock slides open, the automatic voice announces “Entering zero gravity” as their thrusters commence lifting them up in space.

“I will be just behind you,” Lexa says to Clarke via the radio. “It seems a few creatures with tentacles are following us.” 

“Don't waste your ammo. We'll try to dodge the acid,” Clarke advises. 

The duo moves carefully in space towards the vacuum whilst dodging the Lurkers' acid. The lack of oxygen and gravity in the void doesn't seem to affect these monsters at all, as they seem to do just fine in this unwelcoming environment. 

However, something other than acid hits Lexa's thruster on her right foot. The projectiles feel hot as they explode at the moment of collision against her heel. It doesn't eat through her suit armour, though. The strike destabilises Lexa for a few seconds as she is pushed a few metres away from Clarke. The engineer warns the doctor to watch out for any living organism catapulting organic tail-chase projectiles which blow up upon contact with a surface or an object. 

The doctor answers that she has just spotted a giant globule just underneath the restricted area, which is expanding to barricade the vacuum. These creatures are not without intelligence, since they appear to be predicting the duo's every next move. The Corruption has also propagated to the exterior of the colossal spaceship. 

The massive monster resides in space and spits out large flying red bombs following the duo like chasing missiles. Luckily for them, a few red projectiles hit two jumping Lurkers, causing their death as their tentacles are detached from their bodies. The closer they get to the organic creature, the faster the Nest's gigantic globule-like body contracts, in order to throw out bombs from their interior phallic structure which holds four glowing yellow sacks together.

“I shoot at this thing but it doesn't die!” Clarke warns. “It keeps going stronger!”

“Try to spot its weakness! Maybe it's the yellow things inside!” 

“We're too far away!” 

“I will try to lure it, you will fire at it, alright?” Lexa suggests.

“Be careful!”

Lexa moves close enough to the Nest for it to contract its body and spit out a few red bombs, thus exposing the phallic structure holding the yellow sacks. She then shoots at the red bombs and applies stasis on the Nest for it to be slowed down, hence buying Clarke time to blow up the yellow spots. 

“One more time I will get it!” Clarke says over the radio. 

The engineer does it again, with stasis, and Clarke destroys the remaining sacks, causing the Nest to be fully deflated and expose its phallic structure without the sacks. The duo just assumes that the monster is dead and flies through the vacuum to reach the sterilisation room. Their oxygen monitor shows six minutes and twenty-one seconds left. 

Lexa manages to fire at the parallel bars of neon light preventing the duo to access the sterilisation room. The lock was probably set up by Jackson after having exited this room. But, with just the power of the Cutter, the room is made accessible again, paving the way for the duo to get inside the Marker chamber. 

Notwithstanding, before the door to the real Marker chamber glides open, the sterilisation procedures commence. Yellow lights of the alarm system rotate as an automatic voice announces the start of sterilisation; the room becomes covered in sterilising fog and liquid and a lockdown is initiated. Once the liquid and gas vanish, the lockdown is lifted, enabling the engineer and the doctor to access the chamber. 

Upon the opening motion of the door, the duo is greeted by members of the Pack. The child-like creatures ambush Lexa and Clarke with their own version of war chant: a high-pitched scream. Lexa shoots stasis at the first few monsters and advises Clarke to fire at their faces, then use kinesis to throw dismembered body parts at the monsters to conserve ammo. 

But this is just the first wave of terror; the Necromorphs seem determined to block the squad from accessing the Marker, as Slashers and Spitters emerge out of nowhere to attack Lexa and Clarke. 

In panic, they manage to take care of the Slashers and Spitters, yet, in darkness, they detect a ground-breaking noise and something humongous that breathes like an enraged bull. Whenever this thing moves, the metal floor shakes unstoppably and rivets can be heard falling out from the wall. They cautiously shuffle in the chamber, hoping to find the source of danger.

“Can you see the thing? I can't see anything!” Clarke asks. 

“We must bring power back! It's safer and may help us destroy the Marker!”

But Clarke spots a pair of red eyes and a few yellow infected spots advancing towards her partner. “Watch out, Lexa!”

At the moment Lexa turns around, it's too late. The giant beast knocks her off of her feet with its head as the strike sends her flying almost twenty metres away and her flying body also hits Clarke, causing the two women to fall on each other upon landing onto the floor. They are devoid of weapons, as a result, and ought to take them back by getting back on their feet. 

Clarke is fast enough to stasis the monster, thus buying them time to run away and pick up their Cutters and Rivet gun. The doctor helps the engineer up, and they figure out a way to fire at the Brute's potential weaknesses.

“We're running out of static energy!” Lexa warns. “But there are glowing yellow spots on its back!”

“I'll distract it! You fire at its back!” Clarke starts running and diverts the Brute's focus on Lexa. 

The engineer aims carefully at the monster's weak spots as it shrieks in pain. Aware of the direction from where the plasma energy comes, it immediately turns to Lexa and sprints towards her. The engineer shoots her last wave of stasis at the Brute and calls for Clarke to fire at the spots this time. 

The giant creature shrieks and collapses onto the floor, with its huge, spiky arms covering its head and face. Lexa raises an arm up in the air to gesture Clarke not to approach the beast, so she can make sure that it's actually dead. However, by just making three steps forward, she wakes the Brute up as it howls at her. It raises its giant arm and thrusts her backwards, hence depriving her of her weapons once again as they fall from her shoulders and hand. 

The Brute's slap makes Lexa collide again the metal wall; her left arm appears injured by the impact and she is now corned by the monster. She desperately and painfully aims her left hand at the Brute to stasis it, yet nothing comes out, and the beast is now charging at great speed at her.

In all of the sudden, the Brute's movement is slowed down. Next, a bomb or grenade of some kind hits its back and explodes. The Necromorph's right arm is blown up, as a result, but it is still alive. 

Clarke is now holding an upgraded Force Gun with a built-in Detonator. She screams at the Brute to distract it from finishing an injured and helpless Lexa. She stasises the monster again and fires another grenade at the Necromorph, managing ergo to destroy its yellow sacks. The Brute, stripped of its sacks, lets out a low growl and collapses onto the floor. It doesn't cover its head, this time, and appears to be really, really dead.

The doctor ignores whether the Brute is actually dead or alive, tosses the Force Gun onto the floor, and gallops towards Lexa. She runs past the creature, but it doesn't get up. 

“Are you okay?” Clarke stops and squats next to her pal. 

Lexa flinches at the pain in her forearm. “I can't move my left arm. I can't remove my suit.”

“Can you stand up? I'll help you.”

The doctor helps the engineer get back on her feet. Lexa opens her helmet and her face is covered in blood. 

Clarke opens her helmet to check up on Lexa. “Your head is bleeding. Can you see me clearly, Lexa?” She asks worriedly.

“How did you kill that thing?” Lexa ignores Clarke's concerns instead. “Where did you find that weapon?”

“I'll take that as a yes,” Clarke snaps. “But you need a cast for your arm. I found the gun at a corner and pressed on a random trigger, anyway...”

“Thank you, Clarke. For saving me,” the engineer smiles gratefully. “I'll be fine.” 

They grab their weapons and make their slow steps towards a big lever to return power to the chamber.

\- - -

Once the chamber is lit, the duo can now clearly visualise it and all the elements which it contains. The Red Marker rests on a rolling platform surrounded by circular rails, meaning that it can be moved with the help of kinesis. Curiously, the artifact's pointy tips are connected to the ceiling with a massive rotating pole.

There is a control cabin a few steps away from the Marker. The glass is stained by blood, as a few bodies of both humans and Necromorphs scatter next to its entrance. Next to the cabin's door hang a small stasis recharging station and an oxygen recharger.

“Get inside the control cabin. I'll be here to report back to you,” Lexa points at the cabin. 

Clarke strolls towards the control cabin, but looks around warily for a sign of danger. She proceeds to open the door. 

As the door slides shut, she is welcomed by a Leaper that jumps down right through the already broken vent. The surprise attack startles her, and the Necromorph lands onto her head and crushes her. It abruptly opens its mouth and displays its bloody, pointy teeth to bite her head. She has to pluck up her strength and courage to resist the attack, by strangling the creature's neck to suffocate it.

Lexa, horrified at the scene, advances towards the control cabin to rescue the doctor. But as soon as she starts moving, she is met by another hallucination of Costia blocking her way. 

“My love, can't you see it? Can't you see it's time to _make us whole again_?” “Costia” gestures Lexa to glance at the Marker to distract her from saving Clarke. “Let Clarke die, and we shall be together again. She'll become one of them, and you'll be with me, forever.”

Lexa endeavours to ignore the hallucinations and moves past “Costia”, but a wave of pain traverses her temples, as she collapses onto the floor, holding her head with both of her palms. She whispers the doctor's name and catches a glimpse of the control cabin; through her eyes, Clarke resembles a Necromorph, precisely a Spitter, covered in blood, and seems now to be striking something with her slashy arms. 

“No!” The engineer screams in pain and tries to stand up. “Clarke!” 

“Can't you see it, Lexa? She has become one of them!” “Costia” stands in front of an agonising Lexa and grabs her face to shake it uncontrollably. Her eyes and mouth transform into three glowing holes, making her lose her humanity entirely. 

“No, no, no!” Lexa breaks down in “Costia”'s violent embrace. “It can't be! It can't be!” 

“She has entered the City of Light, love. She can't go back, but she is immortal. She has become one of them, Lexa, can't you see it?” “Costia” turns around to look at the control cabin. “It's time for you to join me, too,” she gazes back at the engineer and strokes her face amorously. 

But, suddenly, Lexa's radio makes a static noise as someone is trying to reach her. A familiar voice is muffled by the static noise, calling for the engineer's name. 

“L–xa,” the voice calls. “–exa!” 

The voice appears like a wake-up call for the engineer. She opens her eyes and rises up to let go of “Costia”'s embrace. 

“Lexa! Why are you kneeling? What's happening?” Clarke inquires. 

Lexa squeezes her eyes shut and looks into the direction of the cabin, just to spot Clarke waving at her in distress. 

“Clarke?” Lexa says confusedly. “You're still alive? Am I hallucinating?” 

“I'm alive! A scorpion monster just crashed down the vent and attacked me, but I managed to overcome it. What happened?” 

“Costia” is now standing next to Lexa. “Lexa, my love. She's lying to you! This is her dead soul talking to you! She's not real! She's now a Necromorph, but thanks to your gifted brain, you can see the dead who used to be humans once!”

“Lexa! Tell me what to do!” Clarke tells her pal over the radio. “There are too many buttons and levers!” 

“You're crazy, Lexa! She's not real! I am!” “Costia” yells at the engineer. 

“Clarke! Look for a 'self-destruct' button, or lever! It should be red,” Lexa instructs. “Do it fast!” 

“But there are two red levers next to each other! What can I do?” Clarke is puzzled by the similarity.

“Trust your instinct, Clarke. I believe in you!” 

“Tell her not to do it!” “Costia” screams in Lexa's face as she collapses onto the floor, taunted my her severe headache. 

But one of the levers seems to have just been pulled; a quake vibrates the entire chamber as the Marker commences moving with the help of the enormous rotating machine above it. The rails holding the Marker together break loose as the Marker is lifted up by the rotator. Its base breaks apart and its helix-like structure bursts open like two wings, showing a giant glowing yellow core inside. The artifact's exterior metamorphoses into spiky and slashy wings, resembling massive Necromorph slashy arms. 

_Warning. Self-defense mechanism activated. Warning. Self-defense mechanism activated._

“Lexa! I can't go back! I can't pull the other lever!” A distraught Clarke warns Lexa from inside the cabin. “I can't get out of this room!” 

The engineer looks at Clarke and turns around to glance at the Marker. “Costia” is now standing of it, seeming to absorb its power; her eyes and mouth are wholly transformed into three glowing holes. 

The colossal artifact starts spinning to fling its spiky and slashy exterior to wipe out whatever surrounds it. Lexa stands frozen as she gives the monstrous machine a what-the-hell look full of confusion and horror. 

“This is the day you shall die!” “Costia” now talks in a deep, monster-like voice. “We shall be together as one!” 

Lexa begins sprinting towards the stasis recharger to recharge her static energy. The spiky artifact is now following her and anything that moves inside the chamber. She can no longer reach Clarke inside the cabin, for communication lines appear to have been jammed by the flying Marker. Through the cabin's glass, she can see Clarke tapping on the glass with both of her hands and screaming something, but she cannot read the doctor's lips. The cabin is soundproof. 

Once her stasis storage is filled, Lexa turns around to dodge the spinning Marker which is fully launching itself at her. She has to plunge herself a few metres to her left and land on her arms to dodge the Marker. 

The spinning artifact seems impossible to stop. Lexa tries to aim at the shining globe within it, yet to no avail, since the velocity is just too great to successfully shoot at the glowing sphere. She reaches for the Force Gun dropped by Clarke onto the ground, and leaves her Rivet gun behind. 

At the moment the engineer raises firmly her Force Gun, members of the Pack emit a high-pitched signal to charge at her. But, thankfully, her weapon is powerful enough to knock the first four members of the Pack out with a robust wave of force energy. They keep sprinting towards her with their clawy hands, but one after another, they collapse onto the floor, unresponsive. She has to shoot at the Pack and run in circles for her life to avoid the Marker's spikes of death.

“Costia” is now floating alongside the rotating Marker. 

“Lexa! Stop running! It's useless now! You can't escape the Marker, you can't escape me!” “Costia” yells.

Out of frustration and pain, the engineer switches to her Cutter and fires three shots at “Costia”. But the hallucination is still haunting her as her shots hit the spiky exterior of the Marker. The strike causes the Marker to whirl around more violently and rapidly, and Lexa, obviously, ought to run faster as the raging artifact.

Clarke feels helpless at the scene and attempts to press on any button on the control panel to stop the Marker, but to no avail, since every control seems to malfunction or deactivated. Tears have soaked her face and she desperately collapses onto the control panel. She powerlessly watches her engineer pal falling down and shouting at someone outside of the cabin. 

“It's time for you to die!” “Costia” lets out a thunderous shout to deafen Lexa.

The engineer collapses onto the floor to cover her ears, thus buying more time for the Marker to gain an opportunity to slice her into pieces. But she suddenly remembers that she recharged her stasis w a while ago, hence enabling her to slow down the Marker's movement. She points her Cutter at the core of the artifact and fires eight consecutive shots at it. The Marker freezes from stasis, but as soon as the time-dilating energy loses its effect, the giant artifact agitates and causes a tremour inside the chamber. Metal pieces on the ceiling and metal doors concealing the glass window start falling apart and Lexa is knocked off of her feet as a result. The massive glass window looking out into space starts cracking from the quake. 

“Lexa! If you destroy the Marker, you'll kill me forever!” “Costia” has changed the tone of her voice and is speaking to the engineer with a soft voice full of anguish. “Please, my love... Don't do it...” 

Disregarding “Costia”, Lexa applies stasis again and shoots at the core of the Marker. When the artifact appears to be accelerating again, she quickly shoots stasis at it again and fires repeatedly at its core. The glowing globe explodes as the rotating machine on the top of the Marker is shattered into pieces. 

“Costia” lets out a final high-pitched howl as “she” agonises. Lexa's hallucination of her has collapsed onto the floor as “Costia” lies on her stomach. 

“You are the real killer... You had one job, Lexa,” “Costia” says in her agony. 

Lexa kneels next to “Costia”, seeming guilty of what she has just done. “Everything is in my head, isn't it? You've found a way in my head, so has the Marker. I want all of this to stop. I want you to stop. I want the Marker to stop torturing me...,” she pleads in tears for mercy.

“Costia” reaches a hand onto Lexa's cheek. “Then do it. Do what you have to do. Make us whole again,” she smiles.

The engineer smiles back at her lover like she has just been given a green light. She takes “Costia”'s hand and holds it tightly, and glances at the Plasma Cutter resting firmly in her other palm. She glances at “Costia” again just to spot her lover nodding at her.

She raises the Cutter and places its barrel against her right temple. 

There is a loud blast. 

\- - - 

Clarke cannot stop tears from flowing out of her eyes.

Maybe it's not even the tears that matter anymore. It is actually the sentiment of helplessness, of hopelessness pumping in her heart and traversing her body and state of mind. 

And maybe, just maybe, she has always been influenced by the Marker, not knowing of it subtle effects on her all this time. She is stuck inside this confined and forsaken control cabin, which has promptly become her own state of mind in a concrete version. 

How can she escape it? Will the Marker ever let her out? 

She is starting to conclude that, maybe, she has fallen victim to her own mind, too, just like her suffering engineer pal out there. 

She wishes that she could just exert her telepathic influence on Lexa from inside this soundproof control room, if she ever had one. She wishes that she could be twice as helpful as Lexa is trying to do to save them all. 

She is a doctor, in the end. She should be helpful, yet here she is not.

Lexa is arguing with the void out there, probably with her visions of her family, or Costia. The artifact has transformed itself into a raging, self-controlled machine endeavouring to chop anything in its way. 

And she wonders whether the giant Marker will cut her into pieces, even inside this room, to stop her from feeling powerless. Maybe, just maybe, death could be her most powerful and impactful weapon, for now. 

Lexa is being chased and she can't help her. She presses all the buttons on the control panel and tries to pull the self-defense lever back, but to no avail. She can't even stop her tears, stop her mind from nurturing hopelessness, so how could her stop something as intimidating, as indestructible as the Marker and its glowing core? 

“Lexa! I'm so sorry... I shouldn't have pulled the lever,” she sobs. “I'm so sorry I put you through all this,” she collapses onto the control panel. 

Clarke witnesses the next-level horror as the engineer staggers and falls down, with the spinning Marker ready to slice her. But Lexa seems to be quick-minded enough to use stasis to slow the Marker down, to which Clarke breathes out in relief, albeit her heart is still pounding in her chest turbulently.

Lexa is now shooting incessantly at the core of the artifact. Once it's no longer frozen, the Marker emits a tempestuous quake, as the extent of the tremour reaches the cabin room and the metal plates covering the ceiling start falling down onto Clarke, yet luckily, she still manages to dodge the debris. The glass window displays a few cracks on its surface, as a result of the quake. 

Lexa seems distracted again by something, or someone, from Clarke's perspective. The engineer looks away from the Marker, but seems to gather up her determination again to stasis the Marker and fires at its core. The glowing globe explodes in front of Clarke's eyes as the blast is reflected in her bright blue eyes' pupils. The explosion of the core is accompanied with the destruction of the rotating machine on the top of the artifact, and the Marker's blade-like exterior is shattered into pieces. Its debris is sent flying around the chamber. 

The engineer dodges a few spiky pieces and kneels onto the floor, gazing guiltily and hurtfully at the metal surface. She appears to be crying and mumbling something in her tears. 

Lexa looks at her Cutter and smiles. 

“No! Lexa! No!” Clarke's inaudible scream cannot reach an agonising Lexa, as the engineer lifts her Cutter up next to her right temple. 

But before Lexa even has the time to blow her head up, some giant debris of the Marker hit the already cracked window looking out into space, thus causing a thunderous blast and sucking Lexa and the rest of the remnants inside the chamber into the void. Another debris strikes the cabin room, bursting its glass window and indestructible door open. 

Clarke attempts to make her away out of the collapsing cabin. But the fallen metal pieces are too heavy and fast to barricade her path. 

Her suit switches automatically into zero-gravity mode, displaying fifteen minutes left of breathable air. On her back, her health monitor reaches a critical, however.


End file.
